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COLONIAL DAYS 



IN 



OLD NEW YORK 



BY 

ALICE MORSE EARLE 



NEW YORK 

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 

1896 



co'py 3 



Copyright, 1896, 
By Charles Scribner's Sons. 



John Wilson and Son, Cambridge, U.S.A. 



TO 

THE SOCIETY OF COLONIAL DAMES 

OF THE 

STATE OF NEW YORK 

THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED BY A LOYAL 
AND LOVING MEMBER 

THE AUTHOR 



rn 



PREFACE 

This book should perhaps have beeft " in- 
tittiled^'^ Colonial Days in New N ether landy 
for much of the life described herein was in 
the days of Dutch rule. But it was New 
Nether land for scarce half a cejituryy and the 
name is half-foi^gotten, though it remained, 
both in outer life and i7i hearty a Dutch colonies 
even when the province was New York and 
an English governor had control. In New 
Netherlands as in every place where the DiUch 
plant a colony, as in South Africa to-day, 
Dutch ways, Dutch notions, the Dutch tongue 
lingered long. To this day, Dutch influence 
and Dutch traits, as well as Dutch names, 
are ever present and are a force in New York 
life. 

Fair and beautiful lay the broad harbor 
centuries ago before the eyes of Hendrick Hud- 
S071 and his sea-tveary me7i; a "pleasant place'* 
was Manhattan ; "V lange eylandt was the 



PREFACE 

pear el of New Nederland;''^ the noble river^ 
the fertile shores ^ all seemed to the discoverers 
and to the early colonists to smile a welcome 
and a promise of happy homes. Still to-day 
the bay, the islands, the river, the shores wel- 
come with the same promise. In grateful 
thanks for that welcoine and for the fulfilment 
of that promise of old, — for more years of 
life in New York than were spent i7i my birth- 
place i7t New England, — and in warm affec- 
tion for my many friends of Dutch descent, 
have I — to use the words of Rabelais — 
''^adjoined these words and testimony for the 
honour I bear to antiquity,^'' 



ALICE MORSE EARLE. 



Brooklyn Heights, 

SeJ>tember, 1896. 



CONTENTS 

Chapter "«■ Page 

I. The Life of a Day i 

II. Education and Child-Life ... 14 

III. Wooing and Wedding 45 

IV. Town Life 70 

V. Dutch To\a^ Homes 98 

VI. Dutch Far^ihouses 115 

VII. The Dutch Larder , . . . . 128 

VIII. The Dutch Vrouws 154 

IX. The Colonial Wardrobe. . . . 172 

X. Holidays 185 

XI. A^iuserients and Sports .... 204 

XII. Crimes and Punishments . . . . 227 

XIII. Church and Sunday in Old New 

York 261 

XIV. "The End of his Days" . . . 293 



COLONIAL DAYS 

IN 

OLD NEW YORK 

CHAPTER I 

THE LIFE OF A DAY 

At the first break of day, every spring and 
summer morn, the quiet Dutch sleepers in 
the old colonial town of Albany were roused 
by three loud blasts of a horn sounded far 
and wide by a sturdy cow-herd ; and from 
street and dooryard came in quick answer the 
jingle-jangle, the klingle-klangle of scores of 
loud-tongued brass and iron bells which hung 
from the necks of steady-going hungry Dutch 
cows who followed the town-herder forth each 
day to pastures green. 

On the broad town-commons or the fertile 
river-meadows Uldrick Heyn and his " chosen 
proper youngster," his legally appointed aid, 
watched faithfully all day long their neigh- 
bors' cattle ; and as honest herdsmen earned 



COLONIAL DAYS 

well their sea-want and their handsel of butter,' 
dallying not in tavern, and drinking not of 
wine, as they were sternly forbidden by the 
schepeiis^ until when early dews were falling 
they quit their meadow grasses mellow, for 
" at a quarter of an hour before the sun goes 
down the cattle shall be delivered at the 
church." Thence the patient kine slowly 
Avandered or were driven each to her own 
home-stall, her protecting cow-shed. 

In New Amsterdam the town's cow-herd 
was Gabriel Carpsey; and when his day's 
work was done, he walked at sunset through 
the narrow lanes and streets of the little settle- 
ment, sounding at each dooryard Gabriel's 
horn, a warning note of safe return and 
milking-time. 

Until mid-November did the morning cow- 
horn waken the burghers and their vroiiws at 
sunrise ; and when with cold winter the horn 
lay silent, they must have sorely missed their 
unfailing eye-opener. 

Scarce had the last cow departed in the 
early morn from her master's dooryard, 
before there rose in the gray light from each 
vast-throated chimney throughout the little 
town a faint line of pale, wavering smoke 



IN OLD NEW YORK 

blown up in increasing puffs with skilful 
bellows from last night's brands upon the 
hearth. And quickly the slender line of 
smoke grew and grew to a great cloud over 
each steep-roofed house, and soon with the 
smell of the burning brush and light pine 
that were coaxing into hot flames the sturdy 
oak back and fore logs, were borne forth 
also appetizing odors of breakfast to greet 
the early morn, telling of each thrifty htiys- 
vrouw who within the walls of her cheerful 
kitchen was cooking a good solid Dutch 
breakfast for her mann. 

Cans of buttermilk or good beer, brewed 
perhaps by the patroon, washed down this 
breakfast of suppawn and rye-bread and 
grated cheese and sausage or head-cheese ; 
beer there was in plenty, in ankers, even in 
tuns, in every household. Soon mynheer filled 
his long pipe with native tobacco, and de- 
parted with much deliberation of movement ; 
a sturdy, honest figure, of decent carriage, 
neatly and soberly and warmly clad, with 
thrift and prosperity and contentment show- 
ing in every curve of his too-well-rounded 
figure. Adown the narrow street he paused 
to trade in peltries or lumber, if he were 
3 



COLONIAL DAYS 

middle-aged and well-to-do ; and were he 
sturdy and young, he threshed grain on the 
barn-floor, or ground corn at the windmill, 
or felled wood on the hillside; or perchance, 
were he old or young, he fished in the river 
all day long, — a truly dignified day's work, 
meet for any sober citizen, one requiring 
much judgment and ski'l and reflection. 

And as he fished, again he smoked, and 
ever he smoked. *' The Dutch are obstinate 
and incessant smokers," chronicles the Eng- 
lish clergyman Wolley, Chaplain of Fort 
James, New York, in 1678, "whose diet, es- 
pecially of the boorish sort, being sallets and 
brawn and very often picked buttermilk, 
require the use of that herb to keep their 
phlegm from coagulating and curdling." 
The word *' boorish " was not a term of re- 
proach, nor was the frequent appellation 
*' Dutch bore," over which some historians of 
the colony have seen fit to make merry, both 
boor and bore meaning simply boer, or farmer. 
'' Knave meant once no more than lad ; villain 
than peasant; a boor was only a farmer; a 
varlet was but a serving-man; a churl but a 
strong fellow." 

What fishing was to the goodman of the 
4 



IN OLD NEW YORK 

house, knitting was to the good wife, — a sooth- 
ing, monotonous occupation, ever at hand, 
ever welcome, ever useful. Why, the family 
could scarce be clothed in comfort without 
these clicking needles ! A goodly supply of 
well-knit, carefully dyed stockings was the 
housekeeper's pride; and well they might 
be, for httle were they hidden. The full 
knee-breeches of father and son displayed 
above the buckled shoes a long expanse of 
sturdy hosiery, and the short petticoats of 
mother and daughter did not hide the scarlet 
clocks of their own making. From the mo- 
ment when the farmer gave the fleece of the 
sheep into the hands of his women-kind, every 
step of its transformation into stockings (ex- 
cept the knitting) was so tiresome and tedious 
that it is wearying even to read of it, — clean- 
ing, washing, dyeing, carding, greasing, roll- 
ing, spinning, winding, rinsing, knotting, — 
truly might the light, tidy, easy knitting seem 
a pastime. 

The endless round of *^ domesticall kind of 
drudgeries that women are put to," as Howell 
says, would prove a very full list when made 
out from the life of one of these colonial 
housewives. It seems to us, of modern 
5 



COLONIAL DAYS 

labor-saved and drudgery-void days, a truly 
overwhelming list; but the Dutch hiiys- 
vroiLW did not stagger under the burden, nor 
shrink from it, nor, indeed, did she deem any 
of her daily work drudgery. The sense of 
thrift, of plenty, of capability, of satisfaction, 
v/as so strong as to overcome the distaste to 
the labor of production. 

She had as a recreation, a delight, the 
care of 

" A garden through whose latticed gates 
The imprisoned pinks and tulips gazed," 

a trim, stiff little garden, which often graced 
the narrow front dooryard ; a garden per- 
haps of a single flower-bed surrounded by 
aromatic herbs for medicinal and culinary 
use, but homelike and beloved as such gar- 
dens ever are, and specially beloved as such 
gardens are by the Dutch. Many were the 
tulip bulbs and *' coronation " pink roots that 
had been brought or sent over from Holland, 
and were affectionately cherished as remind- 
ers of the far-away Fatherland. The enthu- 
siastic traveller Van der Donck wrote that by 
1653 Netherlanders had already blooming in 
their American garden-borders "white and red 
6 



IN OLD NEW YORK 

roses, stock roses, cornelian roses, eglantine, 
jenoffelins, gillyflowers, different varieties of 
fine tulips, crown-imperials, white lilies, anem- 
ones, bare-dames, violets, marigolds, summer- 
sots, clove-trees." Garden-flowers of native 
growth were *' sunflowers, red and yellow 
lilies, morning-stars, bell-flowers, red and 
white and yellow maritofBes." I do not know 
what all these " flower-gentles " were, but 
surely it was no dull array of blossoms ; nor 
were their glories dimmed because they 
opened ever by the side of the homely cab- 
bages and lettuce, the humble cucumbers and 
beans, that were equally beloved and tended 
by the garden-maker. 

And the housewife had her beloved and 
homelike poultry. Flocks of snowy geese 
went waddling slowly down the town streets, 
seeking the water-side ; giving rich promise of 
fat holiday dinners and plumper and more 
plentiful feather-beds ; comfortable and thriv- 
ing looking as geese always are, and ever 
indicative of prosperous, thrifty homes, 
they comported well with the pipe-smoking 
burgher and his knitting huys-vrouw and 
their homehke dwelling. 

There was one element of beauty and 
7 



COLONIAL DAYS 

picturesqueness which idealized the little 

town and gave it an added element of life, — 

" Over all and everywhere 
The sails of windmills sink and soar 
Like wings of sea-gulls on the shore." 

The beauty of the windmills probably was 
not so endearing to the settlers as their 
homelikeness. They made the new strange 
land and the new little towns seem like the 
Fatherland. The Indians greatly feared 
them ; as one chronicler states, " they durst 
not come near their long arms and big teeth 
biting the corn in pieces." Last, and not 
least in the minds of the thrifty Dutch, the 
windmills helped to turn to profit the rich 
harvests of grain which were the true foun- 
dation of the colony's prosperity, — not the 
rich peltries of beaver, as was at first boast- 
fully vaunted by the fur-traders. 

As the day wore on, the day's work was 
ended, and a neighborly consultation and 
exchange of greetings formed the day's rec- 
reation. The burgher went to the little 
market-house, and with his neighbors and 
a few chance travellers, such as the skippers 
on the river-sloops, he smoked again his long 
pipe and talked over the weighty affairs of 
8 



IN OLD NEW YORK 

the colo7iie. In the summer-time goodman 
and goodwife both went from stoop to stoop 
of the close-gathered houses, for a klapperuye^ 
or chat all together. This was a feature of 
the colony, architectural and social, and noted 
by all travellers, — " the benches at the door, 
on which the old carls sit and smoke." Here 
the goodwife recounted the simple events 
of the day, — the number of skeins of yarn 
she had spun ; the yards of linen she had 
woven ; the doings of the dye-pot ; the 
crankiness of the churning, to which she 
had sung her churning charm, — 

" Buitterchee, buitterchee, comm 
Alican laidlechee tubicliee vail." 

Perhaps she told her commeres^ her gossips, 
of a fresh suspicion of a betrothal, or perhaps 
sad news of a sick neighbor or a funeral. 
This was never scandal, for each one's affairs 
were every one's affairs ; in the weal or woe 
of one the whole community joined, and in 
many of the influences or effects of that weal 
or woe all had a part. It was noted by his- 
torians that the Dutch were most open in 
discussion of all the doings of the community, 
and had no dread of publicity of every-day 
life. 

9 



COLONIAL DAYS 

Of this habit of colonial neighborliness, 
Mrs. Anne Grant wrote in her " Memoir of 
an American Lady " — Madam Schuyler — 
from contemporary knowledge of early life in 
Albany : — 

" The life of new settlers in a situation like this, 
when the very foundations of society were to be 
laid, was a life of exigencies. Every individual 
took an interest in the general welfare, and contrib- 
uted their respective shares of intelligence and sa- 
gacity to aid plans that embraced important objects 
relative to the common good. This community 
seemed to have a common stock, not only of suffer- 
ings and enjoyments, but of information and ideas." 

When the sun was setting and the cows 
came home, the family gathered on stools 
and forms around the well-supplied board, 
and a plentiful supper of suppawn and milk 
and a sallet filled the hungry mouths, and 
was eaten from wooden trenchers and pewter 
porringers with pewter or silver spoons. The 
night had come; here were shelter and a 
warm hearthstone, and, though in the new 
wild world, it was in truth a home. 

Sometimes, silently smoking with the man 
of the house, there sat in the winter schemer- 
lichty the shadow-light or gloaming, around 

10 



IN OLD NEW YORK 

the great glowing hearth, a group of dusky 
picturesque forms, — friendly Mohawks, who, 
when their furs were safely sold, could be 
welcomed, and were ever tolerated and har- 
bored by the kindly Swannekins; and as 
the shadows gathered into the " fore-night," 
and the fierce wind screamed dov/n the great 
chimney and drew out into the darkness long 
tongues of orange and scarlet flames from 
the oak and hickory fires (burning, says one 
early traveller, half up the chimney), there 
was homely comfort within, and peace in the 
white man's wigwam. 

" What matter how the North-wind raved, — 
Blow high, blow low, not all its snow 
Could quench that hearth-fire's ruddy glow." 

And the blanketed squaw felt in her savage 
breast the spirit of that home, and gently 
nursed her swaddled pappoose; and the 
silent Wilden, ever smoking, listened to the 
Dutch huys-moeder, who, undressing little 
Hybertje and Jan and Goosje for their long 
night's sleep, sang to them the nursery song 
of the Hollanders, of the Fatherland : — 

" Trip a troup a tronjes, 
De vaarken in de boonjes, 
II 



COLONIAL DAYS 

De koejes in de klaver, 

De paarden in de haver, 

De kalver in de lang gras, 

De eenjes in de water plas, 

So groot myn klein poppetje was." 

Or if it were mid-December, the children 
sang to Kriss-Kringle : — 

" Saint Nicholaes, goed heilig man, 
Trekt uw' besten tabbard aan, 
En reist daamee naar Amsterdam, 
Von Amsterdam naar Spange, 
Waar Appellen von Orange 
En Appellen von Granaten 
Rollen door de straaten. 

" Saint Nicholaes, myn goeden vriend, 
Ik heb uwe altyd wel gediend, 
Als gy my nu wat wilt geben 
Zal ik un dienen als myn leben." 

Then the warming-pan was filled with hot 
coals, and thrust warily between the ice-cold 
sheets of the children's beds, and perhaps 
they were given a drink of mulled cider or 
simmering beer ; and scarcely were they sleep- 
ing in their warm flannel cosyntjes, or night- 
caps with long capes, when the curfew rang 
out from the church belfry. It was eight 
o'clock, — '/ Is tijdt te hedde te gaen. The 
housewife carefully covered " the dull red 
brands with ashes over" for the fire of the 

12 



IN OLD NEW YORK 

morrow, and went to bed. The '' tap-toes " 
sounded from the fort, and every house was 
silent. 

And as the honest mynheer and his good 
vrouw slept warmly in their fireside alcove, 
and softly between their great feather-beds, so 
they also slept serenely ; for they were not left 
unprotected from marauding Indian or Chris- 
tian, nor unwatched by the ever-thoughtful 
town authorities. Through the little town 
marched boldly every night a sturdy klop- 
pennann, or rattle-watch, with strong staff 
and brass-bound hourglass and lighted Ian- 
thorn ; and, best of all, he bore a large Idopper^ 
or rattle, which he shook loudly and re- 
assuringly at each door all through the dark 
hours of the night, *' from nine o'clock to 
break of the day," to warn both housekeepers 
and thieves that he was near at hand ; and as 
was bidden by the worshipful schepens, he 
called out what o'clock, and what weather; 
— and thus guarded, let us leave them sleep- 
ing, these honest Dutch home-folk, as they 
have now slept for centuries in death, waiting 
to hear called out to them with clear voice 
" at break of the day " from another world, 
" A fair morning, and all 's well." 
13 



COLONIAL DAYS 



CHAPTER II 

EDUCATION AND CHILD-LIFE 

As soon as the little American baby was 
born in New Netherland, he was taken to the 
church by his Dutch papa, and with due array 
of sponsors was christened by the domine 
from the doop-beckeUy or dipping-bowl, in the 
Dutch Reformed Church. New Yorkers had 
a beautiful silver doop-becken in 1695, and the 
church on the corner of Thirty-Eighth Street 
and Madison Avenue has it still. It was 
made in Amsterdam from silver coin and 
ornaments brought by the good folk of the 
Garden Street Church as offerings. For it 
Domine Henricus Selyns, "of nimble fac- 
ulty," then minister of that church, and for- 
merly of Breuckelen, and the first poet of 
Brooklyn, wrote these pious and graceful 
verses, which were inscribed on the bowl : 

" Op't blote water stelt geen hoot 
'T was beter noyt gebooren. 
14 



IN OLD NEW YORK 

Maer, ziet lets meerder in de Dorp 

Zo' gaet nien noyt verlooren. 
Hoe Christus met syn dierbaer Bloedt 

My reyniglt van myn Zonden. 
En door syn Geest my leven doet 

En wast myn Vuyle Wonden." 

Which translated reads : — 

" Do not put your hope in simple water alone, 't were 

better never to be born. 
But behold something more in baptism, for that will 

prevent your getting lost. 
How Christ's precious blood cleanses me of my sins, 
And now I may live through His spirit and be 

cleansed of my vile wounds." 

This christening was the sole social or 
marked event of the kindeketi s infancy, and 
little else do we know of his early life. He 
ate and slept, as do all infants. In cradles 
slept these children of the Dutch, — deep- 
hooded cradles to protect from the chill 
draughts of the poorly heated houses. In 
cradles of birch bark the Albany babies slept; 
and pretty it was to see the fat little Dutch- 
men sleeping in those wildwood tributes of 
the Indian mothers' skill to the children of 
the men who had driven the children of the 
redmen from their homes. 
. Children were respectful, almost cowed, 
IS 



COLONIAL DAYS 

in their bearing to their parents, and were 
enjoined by ministers and magistrates to 
filial obedience. When the government left 
the Dutch control and became English, the 
Calvinistic sternness of laws as to obedience 
to parents in maturer years which was seen in 
New England was also found in New York. 

" If any Child or Children, above sixteen years of 
age, and of Sufficient understanding, shall smite their 
Natural Father or Mother, unless provoked and 
forct for their selfe preservation from Death or 
Mayming, at the Complaint of the said Father or 
Mother, and not otherwise, they being Sufficient 
witness thereof, that Child, or those Children so 
offending shall be put to Death." 

A few prim little letters of English chil- 
dren have survived the wear and tear of 
years, and still show us in their pretty word- 
ing the formal and respectful language of the 
times. Martha Bockee Flint, in that inter- 
esting and valuable book, " Early Long 
Island," gives this letter written to Major 
Ephenetus Piatt "at Huntting-town " by a 
little girl eleven years old : — 

Ever Honored Grandfather ; 

Sir : My long absence from you and my dear 
Grandmother has been not a little tedious to me. 
i6 



IN OLD NEW YORK 

But what renders me a Vast Deal of pleasure is 
Being intensely happy with a Dear and Tender 
Mother-in-Law and frequent oppertunities of hear- 
ing of your Health and Welfair which I pray God 
may long Continue. What I have more to add is 
to acquaint you that I have already made a Con- 
siderable Progress in Learning. I have already 
gone through some Rules of Arithmetic, and in a 
little Time shall be able of giving you a Better acct 
of my Learning, and in mean time I am Duty Bound 
to subscribe myself 

Your most obedient and 

Duty full Granddaughter 

Pegga Treadwell. 

In the Lloyd Collections is a charming 
little letter from another Long Island miss, 
ten years of age. The penmanship is ele- 
gant and finished, as was that of her elders 
at that date. 

We have, however, scant somxes from 
which to learn of the life of children in colo- 
nial New Y^ork. No diarist of Pepysian 
minuteness tells of the children of New 
Netherland as does the faithful Samuel Sevvall 
of those of New England; no collections of 
letters such as the Winthrop Papers and 
others recount the various item-s of domestic 
life. There are none of the pious and gar- 
2 17 



COLONIAL DAYS 

rulous writings of ministers such as Cotton 
Mather, who in diary and various literary 
compositions give another side of their life. 
We have no such messages from the colonial 
Dutch. In whatever depended on the use 
of "a flourit pen," posterity is neither richer 
nor wiser for the Dutch settlers having lived. 
Nor were their English successors much 
fonder of literary composition. Nothing but 
formal records of churches, of courts, of busi- 
ness life, offer to us any pages for study and 
drawing of inference. And from these records 
the next hint of the life of these colonial 
children, sad to relate, is to their discredit. 
The pragmatic magistrates kept up a steady 
prying and bullying over them. In New 
Orange, in 1673, "if any children be caught 
on the street playing, racing, and shouting 
previous to the termination of the last preach- 
ing, the officers of justice may take their hat 
or upper garment, which shall not be restored 
to the parents until they have paid a fine of 
two guilders," which, we may be sure, would 
insure the miserable infants summary pun- 
ishment on arriving home. 

Matters were no better in New Amsterdam. 
One amusing complaint was brought up 
18 



IN OLD NEW YORK 

against "y® wretched boys" of that settle- 
ment, and by one high in authority, Schout 
De Sille. One of his duties was to patrol the 
town of New Amsterdam at night to see that 
all was peaceful as befitted a town which was 
the daughter of the Dutch government. But 
the poor schoiit did not find his evening 
stroll altogether a happy one. He com- 
plained that the dogs set upon him, and that 
tantalizing boys shouted out "The Indians ! " 
at him from behind trees and fences, — which 
must have startled him sorely, and have been 
most unpleasantly suggestive in those days 
of Indian horrors; and his chief complaint 
was that there was "much cutting of 
hoekies " by the boys, — which means, I 
fancy, playing of tricks, of jokes, of Jioaxes, 
such as were played on Hock-day in England, 
or perhaps "playing hookey," as American 
boys of to-day have been known to do. 

As years passed on, I fear some of these 
young Dutch-Americans were sad rogues. 
They sore roused the wrath of Albany legis- 
lators, as is hereby proven : — 

"Whereas y* children of y^ s'^ city do very un- 
orderly to y^ shame and scandall of their parents 
ryde do\vn y^ hills in y^ streets of the s"^ city with 

19 



COLONIAL DAYS 

small and great slees on the lord day and in the 
week by which many accidents may come, now for 
pventing y*" same it is hereby publishd and declard 
y' it shall and may be lawful for any Constable in 
this City or any other person or persons to take any 
slee or slees from all and every such boys and girls 
rydeing or offering to ryde down any hill within y* 
s'^ city and breake any slee or slees in pieces. 
Given under our hands and seals in Albany y"" 22th 
of December in 12th year of Her Maj's reign Anno 
Domini 1713." 

In 1728 Albany boys and girls still were 
hectored, still were fined by the bullying 
Albany constable for sliding down the 
alluringly steep Albany streets on "sleds, 
small boards, or otherwise." 

Mrs. Grant, writing of about the year 
1765, speaks of the custom of coasting, but 
not of the legislation against it, and gives a 
really delightful picture of coasting-joys, 
which apparently were then partaken of only 
by boys. The schepens and their succes- 
sors the constables, joy-destroying Sivas, 
had evidently succeeded in wresting this 
pleasure from the girls. 

" In town all the boys were extravagantly fond of 
a diversion that to us would appear a very odd and 
childish one. The great street of the town sloped 
20 



IN OLD NEW YORK 

down from the hill on which the fort stood^ towards 
the river; between the buildings was an unpaved 
carriage-road, the foot-path beside the houses being 
the only part of the street which was paved. In 
winter the sloping descent, continued for more than 
a quarter of a mile, acquired firmness from the frost, 
and became very shppery. Then the amusement 
commenced. Every boy and youth in town, from 
eight to eighteen, had a little low sledge, made with 
a rope like a bridle to the front, by which it could 
be dragged after one by the hand. On this one or 
two at most could sit, and this sloping descent be- 
ing made as smooth as a looking-glass, by sliders' 
sledges, etc., perhaps a hundred at once set out 
from the top of this street, each seated in his Httle 
sledge with the rope in his hand, which, drawn to 
the right or left, served to guide him. He pushed 
it off with a little stick, as one would launch a boat ; 
and then, with the most astonishing velocity, pre- 
cipitated by the weight of the owner, the little 
machine glided past, and was at the lower end of 
the street in an instant. What could be so delight- 
ful in this rapid and smooth descent I could never 
discover ; though in a more retired place, and on a 
smaller scale, I have tried the amusement ; but to a 
young Albanian, sleighing, as he called it, was one 
of the first joys of hfe, though attended by the 
drawback of walking to the top of tlie declivity, 
dragging his sledge every time he renewed his 
flight, for such it might well be called. In the 
managing this httle machine some dexterity was 

21 



COLONIAL DAYS 

necessary : an unskilful Phaeton was sure to fall. 
The conveyance was so low that a fall was attended 
with litde danger, yet with much disgrace, for an 
universal laugh from all sides assailed the fallen 
charioteer. This laugh was from a very full chorus, 
for the constant and rapid succession of this pro- 
cession, where every one had a brother, lover, or 
kinsman, brought all the young people in town to 
the porticos, where they used to sit wrapt in furs till 
ten or eleven at night, engrossed by this delectable 
spectacle. I have known an Albanian, after resid- 
ing some years in Britain, and becoming a polished 
fine gentleman, join the sport and slide down with 
the rest." 

Mrs. Grant tells of another interesting and 
unusual custom of the children of Albany: 

"The children of the town were divided into 
companies, as they called them, from five to six 
years of age, until they became marriageable. How 
those companies first originated, or what were their 
exact regulations, I cannot say ; though I, belong- 
ing to none, occasionally mixed with several, yet 
always as a stranger, notwithstanding that I spoke 
their current language fluently. Every company 
contained as many boys as girls. But I do not 
know that there was any limited number ; only this 
I recollect, that a boy and girl of each company, 
who were older, cleverer, or had some other pre- 
eminence among the rest were called heads of the 
company, and as such were obeyed by the others. 

22 



IN OLD NEW YORK 

. . . Children of different ages in the same family 
belonged to different companies. Each company 
at a certain time of the year went in a body to 
gather a particular kind of berries to the hill. It 
was a sort of annual festival attended with religious 
punctuality. Every company had a uniform for 
this purpose ; that is to say, very pretty light bas- 
kets made by the Indians, with lids and handles, 
which hung over one arm, and were adorned with 
various colors. Every child was permitted to 
entertain the whole company on its birthday, and 
once besides, during winter and spring. The mas- 
ter and mistress of the family always were bound to 
go from home on these occasions, while some old 
domestic was left to attend and watch over them, 
with an ample provision of tea, chocolate, preserved 
and dried fruits, nuts and cakes of various kinds, to 
which was added cider or a syllabub ; for these 
young friends met at four and amused themselves 
with the utmost gayety and freedom in any way 
their fancy dictated." 

From all the hints and facts which I have 
obtained, through letters, diaries, church 
and court records, of child-life in any of the 
colonies or provinces among English, Ger- 
man, Swedish, or Dutch settlers, I am sure 
these Albany young folk were the most 
favored of their time. I find no signs of such 
freedom in any other town. 
23 



COLONIAL DAYS 

It has been asserted that in every town in 
New York which was settled under the 
Dutch, a school was established which was 
taught by a competent teacher who received a 
small salary from the government, in addi- 
tion to his other emoluments; and that after 
the reign of the English, begun in 1664, this 
public salary ceased, and many of the towns 
were schoolless. 

This statement is not confirmed by a letter 
of Domine Megapolensis written from Albany 
in 1657. He says plainly that only Manhat- 
tan, Beverwyck, and Fort Casimir had school- 
masters, and he predicts, as a result, "igno- 
rance, a ruined youth, and bewilderment of 
men's minds." Other authorities, such as 
Mr. Teunis G. Bergen, state that this liber- 
ality where it existed should be accredited to 
the Dutch church, not the Dutch state, or 
Dutch West India Company. In truth, it 
was all one matter. The church was an 
essential power in the government of New 
Netherland, as it was in Holland; hence the 
West India Company and the Classis of 
Amsterdam conjoined in sending domines 
with the supply of burgomasters, and like- 
wise furnished school-teachers. 
24 



IN OLD NEW YORK 

When Wouter van Twiller arrived in 1633 
with the first military garrison for New Am- 
sterdam, he brought also envoys of religion 
and learning, — Domine Everardus Bogardus 
and the first pedagogue, Adam Roelandsen. 
Master Roelandsen had a schoolroom assigned 
to him, and he taught the youthful New Am- 
sterdamites for six years, when he resigned 
his position, and was banished from the 
town and went up the river to Renssellaer- 
wyck. I fear he was not a very reputable 
fellow, "people did not speak well of him; " 
and he in turn was sued for slander; and 
some really sad scandals were told about 
him, both in and out of court. And some 
folk have also made very merry over the fact 
that he took in washing, which was really 
one of the best things we know about him, 
for it was not at all a disreputable nor un- 
manly calling in those times. It doubtless 
proved a very satisfactory source of augmen- 
tation of the wavering school-salary, in those 
days of vast quarterly or semi-annual wash- 
ings and great bleeckeryen, or laundries, — 
which his probably was, since his bills were 
paid by the year. 

A carpenter, Jan Cornelissen, tired of his 
25 



COLONIAL DAYS 

tools and trade, left Rensselaervvyck upon 
hearing of the vacant teacher's chair in New- 
Amsterdam, went down the river to Manhat- 
tan, and in turn taught the school for ten 
years. Jan was scarcely more reputable than 
Adam. He lay drunk for a month at a time, 
and was incorrigibly lazy, — so aggravated 
Albanians wrote of him. But any one was 
good enough to teach school. Neither Jan 
nor Adam was, however, a convicted and ban- 
ished felon, as were many Virginian school- 
masters. 

This drunken schoolmaster was only the 
first of many. Until this century, the bane 
of pedagogy in New York was rum. A chorus 
of colonial schoolmasters could sing, in the 
words of Goldsmith, — 

" Let schoolmasters puzzle their brains 

With grammar and nonsense and learning; 
Good liquor I stoutly maintain 
Gives genius a better discerning." 

Occasionally a certain schoolmaster would 
be specified in a school-circular as a sober 
man; proving by the mentioning the infre- 
quency of the qualification. 

As the colony grew, other teachers were 
needed. Governor Stuyvesant sent to the 
^ 26 



IN OLD NE\V YORK 

Classis of Amsterdam for "a pious, well- 
qualified, and diligent schoolmaster." Wil- 
liam Vestens crossed the ocean in answer to 
this appeal, and taught for five years in one 
room in New York; while Jan de la Mon- 
tagne, with an annual salary of two hundred 
florins, taught at the Harberg — later the 
Stadt-Huys — and occupied the position of 
the first public-school teacher. 

For years a project of building a school- 
house was afloat. A spot had been fixed upon, 
and some money subscribed. In 1649 ^^^ 
Commonalty represented to the West India 
Company that "the plate was a long time 
passed around for a common school which 
has been built with words, for as yet the first 
stone is not laid." In response to this 
appeal, a schoolhouse was at last erected. 
Still another school was opened by Master 
Hoboocken, who taught in the Governors' 
bowery, where Dutch- American children were 
already beginning to throng the green lanes 
and by-ways. He was succeeded by Evert 
Pietersen, who was engaged as " Consoler of 
the Sick, Chorister and Schoolmaster;" and 
all persons without distinction were ordered 
not to molest, disturb, or ridicule him in 
27 



COLONIAL DAYS 

either of these ofifices, but to "deliver him 
from every painful sensation." Many of 
the other schoolmasters had filled similar 
offices in the church and community. 

This public school, maintained with such 
difficulty and so many rebuffs through these 
early days, was successfully continued by the 
Collegiate Dutch Church after the English 
possession of New York ; and it still exists 
and flourishes, as does the church. This 
should be a matter of civic pride to every 
New Yorker. The history of that school has 
been carefully written, and is most interesting 
to read. 

Many other teachers were licensed to give 
private lessons, but these public and private 
schools did not satisfy ambitious New York- 
ers. A strong longing was felt in New 
Amsterdam for a Latin School. A charac- 
teristic petition was sent by the burgomas- 
ters and schepeiis to the West India Company : 

" It is represented that the youth of this place 
and the neighborhood are increasing in number 
gradually, and that most of them can read and 
write, but that some of the citizens and inhabitants 
would like to send their children to a school the 
principal of which understands Latin, but are not 
28 



IN OLD NEW YORK 

able to do so without sending them to New Eng- 
land : furthermore, they have not the means to hire 
a Latin schoolmaster expressly for themselves from 
New England, and therefore they ask that the West 
India Company will send out a fit person as Latin 
schoolmaster, not doubting that the number of per- 
sons who will send their children to such a teacher 
v/ill from year to year increase until an academy 
shall be formed whereby this place to great splen- 
dour will have attained, for which, next to God, the 
Honorable Company which shall have sent such 
teacher here shall have laud and praises. For our 
own part we shall endeavor to find a fit place in 
which the schoolmaster shall hold his school." 

The desired "gerund-grinder" — to use 
Tristram Shandy's word — was soon de- 
spatched. The fit place was found, — a good 
house with a garden. He was promised an 
annual salary of five hundred guilders. Each 
scholar also was to pay six guilders per quar- 
ter. But Dr. Curtius's lines fell in difficult 
places; he could keep no order among his 
Latin-school pupils, those bad young New 
Amsterdamites, who " beat each other and tore 
the clothes from each other's backs," and he 
complained he was restrained by the orders 
of parents from properly punishing them. 
(I may say here that I have not found that 
29 



COLONIAL DAYS 

New York schoolmasters were ever as cruel 
as were those of New England. ) A graver 
matter to honest colonists was his charging a 
whole beaver-skin too much per quarter to 
some scholars, and soon he was packed back 
to Holland. His successor, a young man of 
twenty-two, who had been tutor to Stuyve- 
sant's sons, had better luck, better control, 
and a better academy; and New Amsterdam 
to "great splendour was attained," having 
pupils from other towns and colonies, even 
from so far away as Virginia. 

The relations between church, school, and 
state were equally close throughout all New 
Netherland. Thus, in 1661, Governor Stuy- 
vesant recommended Charles De Bevoise as 
schoolmaster for Brooklyn ; and when Doraine 
Henricus Selyns left the Brooklyn church, 
Schoolmaster De Bevoise was ordered to 
read prayers and sermons, "to read a pos- 
tille " every Sabbath until another minister 
was obtained. He was also a krankebesoeckeVy 
or comforter of the sick. Even after the 
establishment of English rule in the colony, 
the connection of Dutch church and school 
was equally close. When Johannis Van 
Eckellen was engaged by the Consistory of 
30 



IN OLD NEW YORK 

the Dutch church in Flatbush in October, 
1682, as a schoolmaster for the town, it was 
under this extremely interesting and minute 
contract, which, translated, reads thus : — 

Articles of Agreement made with Johannis 
Van Eckellen, schoolmaster and clerk of the church 
at Flatbush. 

I St. The school shall begin at eight o'clock in 
the morning, and go out at eleven o'clock. It 
shall begin again at one o'clock and end at four 
o'clock. The bell shall be rung before the school 
begins. 

2nd. When the school opens, one of the chil- 
dren shall read the morning prayer, as it stands in 
the catechism, and close with the prayer before 
dinner. In the afternoon it shall begin with the 
prayer after dinner, and close with the evening 
prayer. The evening school shall begin with the 
Lord's Prayer, and close by singing a Psalm. 

3rd. He shall instruct the children in the 
common prayers and the questions and answers 
of the catechism, on Wednesdays and Saturdays, 
to enable them to say their catechism on Sunday 
afternoons in the church before the afternoon ser- 
vice, otherwise on the Monday following, at which 
the schoolmaster shall be present. He shall de- 
mean himself patient and friendly towards the 
children in their instruction, and be active and 
attentive to their improvement. 

31 



COLONIAL DAYS 

4th. He shall be bound to keep his school 
nine months in succession, from September to 
June, one year with another, or the like period of 
time for a year, according to the agreement with 
his predecessor, he shall, however, keep the school 
nine months, and always be present himself. 

CHURCH SERVICE. 

Art. I St. He shall be chorister of the church, 
ring the bell three times before service, and 
read a chapter of the Bible in the church, between 
the second and third ringing of the bell ; after the 
third ringing he shall read the ten commandments 
and the twelve articles of Faith, and then set the 
Psalm. In the afternoon, after the third ringing 
of the bell, he shall read a short chapter, or one of 
the Psalms of David, as the congregation are 
assembling. Afterwards he shall again set the 
Psalm. 

Art. 2nd. When the minister shall preach at 
Brooklyn or New Utrecht, he shall be bound to 
read twice before the congregation a sermon from 
the book used for the purpose. The afternoon 
sermon will be on the catechism of Dr. Vander 
Hagen, and thus he shall follow the turns of the 
minister. He shall hear the children recite the 
questions and answers of the catechism, on that 
Sunday, and he shall instruct them. When the 
minister preaches at Flatlands, he shall perform 
the like service. 

32 



IN OLD NEW YORK 

Art. 3rd. He shall provide a basin of v/ater 
for the baptisms, for v/hich he shall receive twelve 
stuyvers, in wampum, for every baptism, from the 
parents or sponsors. He shall furnish bread and 
wine for the communion, at the charge of the 
church. He shall furnish the minister, in writing, 
the names and ages of the children to be baptized, 
together with the names of the parents and spon- 
sors ; he shall also serve as a messenger for the 
consistories. 

Art. 4th. He shall give the funeral invitations, 
and toll the bells, for which service he shall receive, 
for persons of fifteen years of age and upwards, 
twelve guilders ; and for persons under fifteen, eight 
guilders. If he shall invite out of the town, he shall 
receive three additional guilders for every town; 
and if he shall cross the river to New York, he shall 
have four guilders more. 

SCHOOL MONEY. 

He shall receive for a speller or reader in the 
day school three guilders for a quarter, and for a 
writer four guilders. 

In the evening school, he shall receive for a 
speller or reader four guilders for a quarter, and 
for a writer five guilders. 

SALARY. 

The remainder of his salary shall be four hun- 
dred guilders in wheat, of wampum value, deliver- 

3 33 



COLONIAL DAYS 

able at Brooklyn Ferry; and for his service from 
October to May, two hundred and thirty-four 
guilders in wheat, at the same place, with the 
dwelling, pasturage, and meadow appertaining to 
the school to begin the first day of October. 

I agree to the above articles, and promise to 
observe the same to the best of my ability. 

JoHANNis Van Eckellen. 

Truly we have through this contract — to 
any one with any powers of historic imagina- 
tion — a complete picture of the duties of 
the schoolmaster of that day. 

When the English came in power in 1664, 
some changes were made in matters of edu- 
cation in New York, but few changes in 
any of the conditions in Albany. Governor 
NichoUs, on his first visit up the river, made 
one significant appointment, — ■ that of an 
English schoolmaster. This was the Eng- 
lishman's license to teach: — 

" Whereas the teaching of the English Tongue is 
necessary in this Government; I have, therefore, 
thought fitt to give License to John Shutte to bee 
the English Schoolmaster at Albany : and upon 
condition that the said John Shutte shall not de- 
mand any more wages from each Scholar than is 
given by the Dutch to their Dutch Schoolmasters. 
I have further granted to the said John Shutte that 

34 



IN OLD NEW YORK 

hee shall bee the only English Schoolmaster at 
Albany." 

The last clause of this license seems super- 
fluous ; for it is very doubtful whether there 
was for many years any other English teacher 
who eagerly sought what was so far from be- 
ing either an onerous or lucrative position. 
Many generations of Albany children grew to 
manhood ere the Dutch schoolmasters found 
their positions supererogatory. 

Women-teachers and girl-scholars were of 
small account in New York in early days. 
Girls did, however, attend the public schools. 
We find Matthew Hillyer, in 1676, setting 
forth in New York that he " hath kept school 
for children of both sexes for two years 
past to satisfaction. " Dame-schools existed, 
especially on Long Island, where English 
influences and Connecticut emigration ob- 
tained. In Flushing Elizabeth Cowper- 
thwait was reckoned with in 1681 for 
"schooling and diet for children;" and in 
1683 she received for thirty weeks' schooling, 
of "Martha Johanna," a scarlet petticoat, — 
truly a typical Dutch payment. A school 
bill settled by John Bowne in Flushing in 
1695 shows that sixpence a week was paid 
35 



COLONIAL DAYS 

to the teacher for each scholar who learned 
reading, while writing and ciphering cost 
one shilling twopence a week. This, con- 
sidering the usual wages and prices of the 
times, was fair pay enough. 

We have access to a detailed school bill of 
the Lloyd boys in 1693, but they were sent 
away from their Long Island home at Lloyd's 
Neck to New England; so the information 
is of no value as a record of a New York 
school; but one or two of these items are 
curious enough to be recounted : — 

£ s. d. 
I Quarter's board for boys 976 

Pd knitting stockings for Joseph ... 14 

Pd knitting i stocking for Henry ... 6 

Joseph's Schooling, 7 mos 7 

A botde of wine for His Mistris ... 10 

To shoo nails & cutting their har ... 7 

Stockins & mittins 3 9 

Pd a woman tailor mending their cloaths 3 3 

Wormwood & rubab for them .... 6 

To Joseph's Mistris for yearly feast and wine i 8 

Pair gloves for boys 26 

Drest deerskin for the boys' breeches . i 6 

Wormwood and rhubarb for the boys and a 
feast and wine for the schoolmistress, albeit 
the wine was but tenpence a bottle, seems 
somewhat unfair discrimination. 
36 



IN OLD NEW YORK 

There is an excellent list of the cloth- 
ing of a New York schoolboy of eleven 
years given in a letter written by Fitz-John 
Winthrop to Robert Livingstone in 1690. 
This young lad, John Livingstone, had also 
been in school in New England. The 
" account of linen & clothes " shows him to 
have been very well dressed. It reads 
thus : — 

Eleven new shirts 3 pr gold buttons 

4 p'" laced sieves 3 pr silver buttons 

8 plane cravets 2 pr fine blew stockings 

4 cravets with lace i pr fine red stockins 

4 stripte wastecoats with 4 white handkerchiefs 

black buttons 2 speckled handkerchiefs 

I flowered wastecoat 3 pair gloves 

4 new osinbrig britches i stuff coat with black 
I gray hat with a black rib- buttons 

bon I cloth coat 

I gray hat with a blew rib- i pr blew plush britches 

bon I pr serge britches 

I dousin black buttons 2 combs 

I dousin coloured buttons i pr new shoees 
Silk & thred to mend his clothes. 

In 1685 Goody Davis taught a dame-school 
at Jamaica; and in 1687 Rachel Spencer died 
in Hempstead, and her nam.e was recorded 
as that of a schoolmistress. In 1716, at the 
Court of Sessions in Westchester, one of the 
farm-v/ives, Dame Shaw, complained that "a 
37 



COLONIAL DAYS 

travelling woman who came out of y® Jerseys 
who kept school at several places in Rye 
parish, hath left with her a child eleven 
months old, for which she desires relief from 
the parish." 

It is easy to fancy a vague romance through 
this short record of the life of this nameless 
"travelling woman" who, babe in arms, 
earned a scanty living by teaching, and who 
at last abandoned the school and the child 
whose birth may, perhaps, have sent her a 
nameless wanderer in a strange country, — 
for " the Jerseys " were far away from Rye 
parish in those days. 

There was a schoolmistress in Hempstead 
at a later date. She was old in 1774. I 
don't know her name, but I know of the end 
of her days. The vestry allowed her forty 
shillings, "to be dealt out to her a little at 
a time, so as to last her all ivinter.'" She 
lived through that luxurious winter, and died 
in 1775. Her coffin cost twelve shillings, 
and Widow Thurston was paid six shillings 
for digging the grave for her old crony and 
gossip. Schoolmistresses were not many on 
Long Island, — can we wonder at it } Had 
this dame been one of the penniless church- 
38 



IN OLD NEW YORK 

poor in a Dutch community (which Hemp- 
stead was not), she would probably have had 
forty shillings a month instead of a winter, 
and a funeral that would have been not only 
decent in all the necessities of a funeral, but 
a triumph of prodigality in all the comforts 
and pleasures of the mortuary accompani- 
ments of the day, such as wine, rum, beer, 
cakes, tobacco, and pipes. 

The " book-learning " afforded to colonial 
girls in New York was certainly very 
meagre. Mrs. Anne Grant wrote of the 
first quarter of the eighteenth century: — 

'^ It was at that time very difficult to procure 
the means of instruction in those island districts ; 
female education was, of consequence, conducted 
on a very limited scale ; girls learned needlework 
(in which they were indeed both skilful and inge- 
nious) from their mothers and aunts ; they were 
taught, too, at that period to read, in Dutch, the 
Bible, and a few Calvinistic tracts of the devotional 
kind. But in the infancy of the settlement few 
girls read English; when they did, they were 
thought accomplished; they generally spoke it, 
however imperfectly, and few were taught writing." 

William Smith, the historian of New 
York, writing during the year 1756 of his 
39 



COLONIAL DAYS 

fellow townswomen, and of education in 
general in New York, gives what was doubt- 
less a true picture of the inelegance of educa- 
tion in New York: — 

" There is nothing they [New York women] so 
generally neglect as Reading, and indeed all the 
Arts for the improvement of the Mind, in which I 
confess we have set them the Example. Our 
Schools are in the Lowest Order, the Instructors 
want Instruction, and through a long, shameful neg- 
lect of the Arts and Sciences our Common Speech 
is very corrupt, and the Evidences of a Bad Taste 
both as to thought and Language are visible in all 
our Proceedings publick and private." 

One obstacle to the establishment and 
success of schools and education was the 
hybridization of language. New Yorkers 
spoke neither perfect Dutch nor good Eng- 
lish. It was difficult in some townships to 
gather an English-speaking jury; hence, 
naturally, neither tongue could be taught 
save in the early and simpler stages of educa- 
tion. It was difficult for those little Dutch- 
men who heard Holland-Dutch spoken con- 
stantly at home to abandon it entirely and 
speak English in the schools. The Flatbush 
master (himself a Dutchman, but bound to 
40 



IN OLD NEW YORK 

teach English) invented an ingenious plan 
to crowd out the use of Dutch in school. 
He carried a little metal token which he gave 
each day to the first scholar whom he heard 
use a Dutch word. That scholar could 
promptly turn the token over to any other 
scholar whom he likewise detected in using 
Dutch, and he in turn could do the same. 
Thus the token passed from hand to hand 
through the day ; but the unlucky v/ight who 
chanced to have possession of it when the 
school day was over was soundly whipped. 

In default of "spilling," as one master 
wrote in his receipts, and in which he was 
somewhat shaky himself, he and all other 
colonial teachers took a firm stand on 
"cyphering." "The Bible and figgers is all 
I want my boys to know," said one old 
farmer. When the school session opened 
and closed, as we have seen in Flatbush, 
with prayer and praise, with catechism every 
day, and special catechising twice a week, 
even "figgers" did not have much of a 
chance. All the old Dutch primers that 
I have seen, the Groot ABC boeks zeer 
bekwaam voor de yongekindercn te leereUy 
contain nothing (besides the alphabet) but 
41 



COLONIAL DAYS 

religious sentences, prayers, verses of the 
Bible, pious rhymes, etc. ; and dingy little 
books they are, not even up to the standard 
of our well-known New England Primer. 

Though the Dutch were great printers of 
horn-books, I do not find that they were 
universal users of those quaint little " engines 
of learning." If used in Dutch-American 
schools, none now survive the lapse of two 
centuries; and indeed only one can be found 
in a Holland museum. Mr. Tuer, the his- 
torian of the horn-book, states that there is 
one in the museum at Antwerp, printed by 
H. Walpot, of Dordrecht, Netherlands, in 
1640; and a beautiful silver-backed Dutch 
horn-book in the collection of an English 
clergyman at Coom.be Place, England ; and a 
iew others in public libraries that are prob- 
ably Dutch. Dutch artists show, by their 
frequent representations of horn-books in 
paintings of children, that the little a-d- 
boordje was well known. In the " Christ 
blessing Little Children," by Rembrandt, 
the presentment of a child has a horn-book 
hanging at his side. In several pictures 
by Jan Steen, 1626-79, horn-books may be 
noted; in one a child has hung his horn-book 
42 



IN OLD NEW YORK 

on a parrot's perch while he plays. In 1753 
English children used horn-books in New 
York as in the other provinces, for they were 
advertised with Bibles and primers in the 
New York newspapers at that time. 

Printed arithmetics were rarely used or 
seen. Schoolmasters carried with them care- 
fully executed "sum-books" in manuscript, 
from which scholars copied the sums and 
rules into small blank-books of their own. 
One, of a Gravesend scholar in 1754, has 
evidently served to prove the pupil's skill 
both in arithmetic and penmanship. The 
book is prefaced by instructive aphorisms, 
such as " Carefully mind to mend in every 
line ; " " Game not in school when you should 
write." The wording of the rules is some- 
what curious. One reads : — 

" Rule of Bartar, which is for exchanging of ware, 
One Commodity for another. This Rule shows 
the Merchants how they may Proportion their 
Goods so that neither of them may sustain loss. 
Sum. Two Merchants A. and B. bartar. A. hath 
320 Dozen of Candles @ 4/6 per Dozen; for 
which B. giveth him £^,0 in Cash and y^ Rest in 
Cotton @ 8d per lb. I demand : how much Cotton 
B. must give A. more than the £t^o in Cash." 



43 



COLONIAL DAYS 

As commerce increased and many young 
men sought a seafaring life, navigation was 
taught, and advanced mathematics. In 1749 
the notice of a Brooklyn "Philomath" on 
Nassau Island shows that he could teach 
" Arithmetick vulgar and decimal ; Geometry 
plain and Spherical; Surveying, Navigation 
in 3 kinds, viz: Plain Mercator and Great 
Circle Sailing, Astronomy, and Dialling." 
Thus did this Philomath meet the demand of 
the day. In 1773 the Flatbush Grammar 
School was taught by John Copp, who also 
took scholar-boarders, who " have the advan- 
tage of being taught geography in the winter 
evenings, with many other useful particulars 
that frequently occur to the teacher," which 
seems to present a rather melancholy picture 
when we reflect on the other particulars of 
good coasting and skating that then were 
around Flatbush, on the Steenbakkery for 
instance, which, doubtless, would frequently 
occur on winter evenings to the scholar- 
boarder. 



44 



IN OLD NEW YORK 



CHAPTER III 

WOOING AND WEDDING 

The domestic life of the Dutch settlers 
flowed on in a smooth-running and rather dull 
stream, varying little through either honor- 
bearing or discreditable incident from day to 
day. Any turbulence of dissension or divorce 
between husband and wife was apparently 
little known and certainly little noted. Occa- 
sionally an entry whigh tells of temporary 
division or infelicity can be unearthed from 
the dingy pages of some old court-record, 
thereby disclosing a scene and actors so 
remote, so shadowy, so dimmed with the dust 
of centuries, that the incident often bears no 
semblance of having happened to real living 
folk, but seems rather to pertain to a group 
of inanimate puppets. One of these feature- 
less, colorless, stiff Dutch marionettes is 
A^nneke, the daughter of boisterous old Dom- 
ine Schaets, the first minister at Fort Orange. 
45 



COLONIAL DAYS 

A fleeting glimpse of her marital infelicity is 
disclosed through the record of her pres- 
ence in Albany under the shadow of some 
unexplained and now forgotten scandal. To 
satisfy her father's virtuous and severe con- 
gregation, she refrained from contaminating 
attendance at Communion. The domine 
resented this condition of affairs, and refused 
to appear before the Consistory though sum- 
moned four times by the bode. He persisted 
in irritatingly *' ripping up new differences 
and offences ; " and he disregarded with 
equal scorn the summons of a magistrate to 
appear before the Court ; and he was there- 
fore suspended from his clerical office. All 
was at last " arranged in love and friendship," 
leaving out the dispute about " Universal 
Grace," which I suppose could not be settled ; 
but daughter Anneke was ordered off to New 
York to her husband, '' with a letter of recom- 
mendation; and as she was so headstrong, 
and would not depart without the Sheriff's 
and Constable's interference, her disobedi- 
ence was annexed to the letter." It is pleas- 
ing to know, from the record of an " Extraor- 
dinary Court holden in Albany" a month 
later, — in July, 1681, — of a very satisfac- 
46 



IN OLD NEW YORK 

tory result in the affairs of the young 
couple. 

*' The : Davidtse premisses to conduct himself 
well and honorably towards his wife Anneke Schaets, 
to Love and never neglect her, but faithfully and 
properly to maintain and support her with her chil- 
dren according to his means, hereby making null 
and void all questions that have occurred and 
transpired between them both, never to repeat 
them, but are entirely reconciled : and for better 
assurance of his real Intention and good Resolu- 
tion to observe the same, he requests that two good 
men be named to oversee his conduct at New 
York towards his said wife, being entirely disposed 
and inclined to live honorably and well with her as 
a Christian man ought, subjecting himself willingly 
to the rule and censure of the said men. On the 
other hand his wife Anneke Schaets, premisses also 
to conduct herself quietly and well and to accom- 
pany him to New York with her children and prop- 
erty, not to leave him any more, but to serve and 
help him and with him to share the sweets and the 
sours as becomes a Christian spouse : Requesting 
all differences which had ever existed between them 
both may be hereby quashed and brought no more 
to light or cast up, as she on her side is heartily 
disposed to. Their Worship of the Court Recom- 
mend parties on both Sides to observe strictly their 
Reconciliation now made, and the gentleman at 
New York will be informed that the matter is so 
far arranged." 

47 



COLONIAL DAYS 

We can certainly add the profound hope, 
after all this quarrelling and making up, after 
all those good promises, that Anneke's home 
was no longer " unregulated and poorly kept," 
as was told of her by the Labadist travellers 
during their visit to Albany at that time. 
The appointing of *' two good men " as arbi- 
trators or overseers of conduct was very usual 
in such cases ; thereby public adjustment in 
open court of such quarrels was avoided. 

Tender piarents could not unduly shelter a 
daughter who had left her husband's bed and 
board. He could promptly apply to the 
court for an order for her return to him, 
and an injunction to her parents against har- 
boring her. It has been plain to see in all 
such cases which I have chanced upon in 
colonial records that the Court had a strong 
leaning towards the husband's side of the 
case ; perhaps thinking, like Anneke Schaets, 
that the wife should " share the sweets and 
the sours like a Christian spouse." 

In 1697 Daniel Vanolinda petitioned that 
his wife be '* ordyred to go and live with him 
where he thinks convenient." The wife's 
father was promptly notified by the Albany 
magistrates that he was " discharged to shel- 
48 



IN OLD NEW YORK 

ter her in his house or elsewhere, upon Pen- 
alty as he will answer at his Perill ; " and 
she returned to her husband. 

In the year 1665 a New Amsterdammer 
named Lantsman and his wife, Beletje, were 
sorely estranged, and went to the courts for 
settlement of these differences. The Court 
gave the matter into the hands of two of the 
Dutch ministers, who were often assigned the 
place of peacemakers. As usual, they ordered 
the parents of Beletje to cease from harboring 
or abetting her. The husband promised to 
treat her well, but she answered that he always 
broke his promises to her. He was deter- 
mined and assiduous to retrieve her, and 
finally was successful; thus they were not 
made '' an example to other evil housekeep- 
ers." A curious feature of this miarriage 
quarrel is the fact that this Lantsman, who 
was so determined to retain his wife, had 
been more than recreant about marrying her. 
The banns had been published, the wedding- 
day set, but Bridegroom Lantsman did not 
appear. Upon being hauled up and repri- 
manded, his only proffered excuse was the 
very simple one that his clothes were not 
ready. 

4 49 



COLONIAL DAYS 

When Anniatje Fabritius requested an 
order of court for her husband to vacate her 
house with a view of final separation from 
him, it was decided by the arbitrators that no 
legal steps should be taken, but that " the 
parties comport themselves as they ought, 
in order that they win back each other's 
affections, leaving each other in meanwhile 
unmolested " — which was very sensible ad- 
vice. Another married pair having '* met with 
great discouragement " (which is certainly a 
most polite expression to employ on such a sub- 
ject), agreed each to go his and her way, after 
an exact halving of all their possessions. 

Nicasius de Sille, magistrate of New 
Utrecht and poet of New Netherland, sepa- 
rated his life from that of his wife because — 
so he said — she spent too much money. It 
is very hard for me to think of a Dutch 
woman as " expensefuU," to use Pepys' word. 
He also said she was too fond of schnapps, — 
which her respected later life did not confirm. 
Perhaps he spoke with poetic extravagance, 
or the nervous irritability and exaggeration 
of genius. Albert Andriese and his wife were 
divorced in Albany in 1670, ''because 
strife and difference hath arisen between 
50 



IN OLD NEW YORK 

them." Daniel Denton was divorced from his 
wife in Jamaica, and she was permitted to 
marry again, by the new provincial law of 
divorce of 1672. These few examples break 
the felicitous calm of colonial matrimony, 
and have a few companions during the years 
1670-72; but Chancellor Kent says "for 
more than one hundred years preceding the 
Revolution no divorce took place in the 
colony of New York ; " and there was no way 
of dissolving a marriage save by special act 
of Legislature. 

Occasionally breach-of-promise suits werd 
brought. In 1654 Greetje Waemans pro- 
duced a marriage ring and two letters, prom- 
issory of marriage, and requested that on that 
evidence Daniel de Silla be ** condemned to 
legally marry her." He vainly pleaded his 
unfortunate habit of some days drinking too 
much, and that on those days he did much 
which he regretted ; among other things, his 
bacchanalian love-making of Greetje. Fran- 
cois Soleil, the New Amsterdam gunsmith, 
another recreant lover, swore he would rather 
go away and live with the Indians (a terrible 
threat) than marry the fair Rose whom he 
had left to droop neglected — and unmarried. 
51 



COLONIAL DAYS 

One curious law-case is shown by the 
injunction to Pieter Kock and Anna van 
Voorst. They had entered into an agree- 
ment of marriage, and then had been un- 
wilHng to be wedded. The burgomasters 
and schepens decided that the promise should 
remain in force, and that neither should 
marry any other person without the permis- 
sion of the other and the Court; but Anna 
did marry very calmly (when she got ready) 
another more desirable and desired man 
without asking any one's permission. 

It certainly gives us a great sense of the 
simplicity of living in those days to read the 
account of the suit of the patroon of Staten 
Island in 1642 against the parents of a fair 
young Elsje for loss of services through her 
marriage. She had been bound out to him as 
a servant, and had married secretly before her 
time of service had expired. The bride told 
the worshipful magistrates that she did not 
know the young man when her mother and 
another fetched him to see her; that she 
refused his suit several times, but finally 
married him v/illingly enough, — in fact, eloped 
with him in a sail-boat. She demurely of- 
fered to return to the Court, as compensation 
52 



IN OLD NEW YORK 

and mollification, the pocket-handkerchief 
which was her husband's wedding-gift to her. 
Two years later, Elsje (already a widow) 
appeared as plaintiff in a breach-of-promise 
suit; and offered, as proof of her troth- 
plight, a shilling-piece which was her second 
lover's not more magnificent gift. Though 
not so stated in the chronicle, this handker- 
chief was doubtless given in a " marriage- 
knot," — a handkerchief in which was tied 
a gift of money. If the girl to whom it was 
given untied the knot, it v/as a sign of con- 
sent to be speedily married. This fashion 
of marriage-knots still exists in parts of 
Holland. Sometimes the knot bears a motto ; 
one reads when translated, " Being in love 
does no harm if love finds its recompense in 
love; but if love has ceased, all labor is in 
vain. Praise God." 

Though second and third marriages were 
common enough among the early settlers of 
New Netherland, I find that usually attemipts 
at restraint of the wife were made through 
wills ordering sequent loss of property if she 
married again. Nearly all the wills are more 
favorable to the children than to the wife. 
Old Cornelius Van Catts, of Bushwick, who 
53 



COLONIAL DAYS 

died in 1726, devised his estate to his wife 
Annetje with this gruff condition: ''If she 
happen to marry again, then I geff her nothing 
of my estate, real or personal. But my wife 
can be master of all by bringing up to good 
learning my two children. But if she comes 
to marry again, then her husband can take 
her away from the farm." John Burroughs, 
of Newtown, Long Island, in his will dated 1 67 8 
expressed the general feeling of husbands 
towards their prospective widows when he 
said, ** If my wife marry again, then her 
husband must provide for her as I have." 

Often joint-wills were made by husband 
and wife, each with equal rights if survivor. 
This was peculiarly a Dutch fashion. In 
Fordham in 1670 and 1673, Claude de 
Maistre and his wife Hester du Bois, Pierre 
Cresson and his wife Rachel Cloos, Gabriel 
Carboosie and Brieta Wolferts, all made 
joint-wills. The last-named husband in his 
half of the will enjoined loss of property if 
Brieta married again. Perhaps he thought 
there had been enough marrying and giving 
in marriage already in that family, for Brieta 
had had three husbands, — a Dane, a Fries- 
lander, and a German, — and his first wife had 
54 



IN OLD NEW YORK 

had four, and he — well, several, I guess ; and 
there were a number of children; and you 
could n't expect any poor Dutchman to find 
it easy to make a will in all that confusion. 
In Albany may be found several joint-wills, 
among them two dated 1663 and 1676; 
others in the Schuyler family. There is 
something very touching in the thought of 
those simple-minded husbands and wives, in 
mutual confidence and afi'ection, going, as we 
find, before the notary together and signing 
their will together, " out of love and special 
nuptial affection, not thereto misled or sinis- 
terly persuaded," she bequeathing her dower 
or her father's legacy or perhaps her own 
little earnings, and he his hard-won guilders. 
It was an act significant and emblematic of 
the ideal unison of interests and purposes 
which existed as a rule in the married life of 
these New York colonists. 

Mrs. Grant adds abundant testimony to the 
domestic happiness and the marital affection 
of residents of Albany a century later. She 
states : — 

" Inconstancy or even indifference among mar- 
ried couples was unheard of, even where there 
happened to be a considerable disparity in point of 
55 



COLONIAL DAYS 

intellect. The extreme affection they bore their 
mutual offspring was a bond that forever endeared 
them to each other. Marriage in this colony was 
always early, very often happy, and very seldom in- 
deed interested. When a man had no son, there 
was nothing to be expected with a daughter but a 
well brought-up female slave, and the furniture of 
the best bed-chamber. At the death of her father 
she obtained another division of his effects, such as 
he thought she needed or deserved; for there was 
no rule in these cases. 

*' Such was the manner in which those colonists 
began life; nor must it be thought that those 
were mean or uninformed persons. Patriots, magis- 
trates, generals, those who were afterwards wealthy, 
powerful, and distinguished, all, except a few elder 
brothers, occupied by their possessions at home, 
set out in the same manner ; and in after life, even 
in the most prosperous circumstances, they de- 
lighted to recount the ' humble toils and destiny 
obscure' of their early years." 

Weddings usually took place at the house 
of the bride's parents. There are some 
records of marriages in church in Albany in 
the seventeenth century, one being celebrated 
on Sunday. But certainly throughout the 
eighteenth century few marriages were within 
the church doors. Mrs. Vanderbilt says no 
Flatbush marriages took place in the church 
56 



IN OLD NEW YORK 

till within the past thirty or forty years. In 
some towns written permission of the parents 
of the groom, as well as the bride, was 
required by the domine before he would 
perform the marriage ceremony. In the 
Guelderland the express consent of father 
and mother must be obtained before the 
marriage ; and doubtless that custom of the 
Fatherland caused its adoption here in some 
localities. The minister also in some cases 
gave a certificate of permission for mar- 
riage ; here is one given by " ye minister at 
Flatbush," — 

Isaac Hasselburg and Elizabeth Baylis have had 
their proclamation in our church as commonly our 
manner and custom is, and no opposition or hin- 
drance came against them, so as that they may be 
confirmed in y° banns of ^Matrimony, whereto we 
wish them blessing. Midwout y^ March 17th, 
1689. 

Rudolph Varrick, Miftister, 

This was probably to permit and author- 
ize the marriage in another parish. 

Marriage fees were not very high in colo- 
nial days, nor were they apparently always re- 
tained by the minister; for in one of Domine 
Selyns's accounts of the year 1662, we find 
57 



COLONIAL DAYS 

him paying over to the Consistory the sum 
of seventy-eight guilders and ten stuyvers for 
fourteen marriage fees received by him. Tlie 
expenses of being married were soon in- 
creased by the issuing of marriage licenses. 
During the century dating from the domi- 
nation of the British to the Revolutionary 
War nearly all the marriages of genteel folk 
were performed by special permission, by 
Governor's license, the payment for which 
(a half-guinea each, so Kalm said) proved 
through the large numbers a very welcome 
addition to the magistrates' incomes. It was 
in fact deemed most plebeian, almost vulgar, 
to be married by publication of the banns 
for three Sundays in church, or posting 
them according to the law, as was the uni- 
versal and fashionable custom in New Eng- 
land. This notice from a New York news- 
paper, dated December 13, 1765, will show 
how widespread had been the aversion to the 
publication of banns : — 

'^ W^ are creditly informed that there was married 
last Sunday evening, by the Rev. Mr. Auchmuty, a 
very respectable couple that had published three 
different times in Trinity Church. A laudable ex- 
ample and worthy to be followed. If this decent 

58 



IN OLD NEW YORK 

and for many reasons proper method of publication 
was once generally to take place, we should have no 
more of clandestine marriages ; and save the ex- 
pense of licenses, no inconsiderable sum these hard 
and depressing times." 

Another reason for " crying the banns " 
was given in Holt's " Nqw York Gazette and 
Postboy" for December 6, 1765. 

" As no Licenses for Marriage could be obtained 
since the first of November for Want of Stamped 
Paper, we can assure the Publick several Genteel 
Couple were publish'd in the different Churches of 
this City last Week ; and we hear that the young 
Ladies of this Place are determined to Join Hands 
with none but such as will to the utmost endeavour 
to abolish the Custom of marrying with License 
which Amounts to many Hundred per annum 
which might be saved." 

Severe penalties were imposed upon clergy- 
men who violated the law requiring license 
or publication ere marriage. The Lutheran 
minister performed such a marriage, and the 
sellout's *' conclusion " as to the matter was 
that the offending minister be flogged and 
banished. But as he was old, and of former 
good services, he was at last only suspended 
a year from power of preaching. 
59 



COLONIAL DAYS 

Rev. Mr. Miller, an English clergyman writ- 
ing in 1695, complains that many marriages 
were by justices of the peace. This was 
made lawful by the States-General of Holland 
from the year 1590, and thus was a law in New 
Netherland. By the Duke's Laws, 1664, it 
was also made legal. This has never been 
altered, and is to-day the law of the State. 

Of highly colored romance in the life of the 
Dutch colonists there was little. Sometimes 
a lover was seized by the Indians, and his 
fair betrothed mourned him through a long 
life. In one case she died after a few years 
of grief and waiting, and on the very day of 
his return from his savage prison to his old 
Long Island home he met the sad little 
funeral procession bearing her to the grave. 
Another humbler romance of Gravesend was 
when a sorrowing widower fell in love with a 
modest milkmaid at first sight as she milked 
her father's cows ; ere the milking was finished 
he told his love, rode to town on a fast horse 
for a governor's license, and married and 
carried off his fair Grietje. A century later 
a fair Quakeress of Flushing won in like 
manner, when milking, the attention and 
affection of Walter Franklin of New York. 
60 



IN OLD NEW YORK 

Another and more strange meeting of lovers 
was when young Livingstone, the first of the 
name in New York, poor and unknown, came 
to the bedside of a dying Van Rensselaer in 
Albany to draw up a will. The dying man, 
Vv^ith a jealousy stronger than death, said to 
his beautiful wife, Alida Schuyler, '' Send 
him away, he will be your second husband ; " 
and he was, — perhaps the thought provoked 
the deed. 

Even if there were few startling or pic- 
turesque romances or brilliant matches, there 
was plenty of ever-pleasant wooing. New 
Amsterdam was celebrated, just before its 
cession to the English, for its young and 
marriageable folk and its betrothals. This is 
easily explained; nearly all the first emi- 
grants were young married people, and the 
years assigned to one generation had passed, 
and their children had grown up and come to 
mating-time. Shrewd travellers, who knew 
where to get good capable wives, wooed and 
won their brides among the Dutch-American 
fair ones. Mr. Valentine says : " Several of the 
daughters of wealthy burghers were mated to 
young Englishmen whose first occasions were 
of a temporary character." The beautiful sur- 
6i 



COLONIAL DAYS 

roundlngs of the little town tempted all to 
love-making, and the unchaperoned simpli- 
city of society aided early ** matching." The 
Locust-Trees, a charming grove on a bluff 
elevation on the North River a little south of 
the present Trinity Churchyard, was a famous 
courting-place ; or tender lovers could stroll 
down the " Maiden's Path ; " or, for still longer 
walks, to the beautiful and baleful " Kolck," 
or " Collect," or " Fresh Water," as it was 
sequentially called; and I cannot imagine 
any young and susceptible hearts ever pass- 
ing without some access of sentiment through 
any green field so sweetly named as the 
*' Clover Waytie." 

There were some curious marriage cus- 
toms, — some Dutch, some English. One 
very pretty piece of folk-lore, of bride-honor- 
ing, was brought to my notice through the 
records of a lawsuit in the infant town of New 
Harlem in 1663, as well as an amusing local 
pendant to the celebration of the custom. It 
seems that a certain young Harlem couple 
were honored in the pleasant fashion of the 
Fatherland, by having a '' May-tree " set up 
in front of their dwelling-place. But certain 
gay young sparks of the neighborhood, to 
62 



IN OLD NEW YORK 

anger the groom and cast ridicule on his 
marriage, came with unseemly noise of blow- 
ing of horns, and hung the lovely May-tree 
during the night with ragged stockings. We 
never shall know precisely what special taunt 
or insult was offered or signified by this over- 
ripe crop of worn-out hosiery; but it evi- 
dently answered its tantalizing purpose, for 
on the morrow, at break of day, the bride- 
groom properly resented the " mockery and 
insult," cut down the hateful tree, and com- 
mitted other acts of great wrath; which, 
being returned in kind (for thrice was the 
stocking-full tree set up), developed a small 
riot, and thus the whole affair was recorded. 
Among the State Papers at Albany are 
several letters relating to another insulting 
" stocking-tree '* set up in Albany at about 
the same date, and also fiercely resented. 

Collections for the church poor were 
sometimes taken at weddings, as was the 
universal custom for centuries in Holland. 
When Stephanus Van Cortlandt and Ger- 
trude Schuyler were married in Albany, in 
1 67 1, thirteen guilders six stuyvers were con- 
tributed at the wedding, and fifteen guilders 
at the reception the following day. At the 
63 



COLONIAL DAYS 

wedding of Martin Kreiger, the same year, 
eleven guilders were collected; at another 
wedding the same amount. When the daugh- 
ter of Domine Bogardus was married, it was 
deemed a very favorable time and opportu- 
nity to take up a subscription for building 
the first stone church in New Amsterdam. 
When the v/edding-guests were all mellow 
with wedding-cheer, " after the fourth or fifth 
round of drinking," says the chronicle, and, 
hence generous, each vied with the other in 
good-humored and pious liberality, they sub- 
scribed " richly." A few days later, so the 
chronicle records, some wished to reconsider 
the expensive and expansive transaction at 
the wedding-feast, and "well repented it." 
But Director Kieft stiffly held them to their 
contracts, and *' nothing availed to excuse." 

It is said that the English drink of posset 
was served at weddings. From the '' New 
York Gazette" of February 13, 1744, I copy 
this receipt for its manufacture : — 

" A Receipt for all young Ladies that are going to 
be Married. To Make a 

SACK-POSSET. 

From famed Barbadoes on the Western Main 
Fetch sugar half a pound; fetch sack from Spain 
64 



IN OLD NEW YORK 

A pint; and from the Eastern Indian Coast 

Nutmeg, the glory of our Northern toast. 

O'er flaming coals together let them heat 

Till the all-conquering sack dissolves the sweet. 

O'er such another fire set eggs, twice ten, 

New born from crowing cock and speckled hen ; 

Stir them with steady hand, and conscience pricking 

To see the untimely fate of twenty chicken. 

From shining shelf take down your brazen skillet, 

A quart of milk from gentle cow will fill it. 

When boiled and cooked, put milk and sack to egg, 

Unite them firmly like the triple League. 

Then covered close, together let them dwell 

Till Miss twice sings: Vou 7nust not kiss and tell. 

Each lad and lass snatch up their murdering spoon, 

And fall on fiercely like a starved dragoon." 

Many frankly simple customs prevailed. I 
do not know at how early a date the fashion 
obtained of " coming out bride" on Sunday; 
that is, the public appearance of bride and 
groom, and sometimes entire bridal party in 
wedding-array, at church the Sunday after 
the marriage. It certainly was a common 
custom long before Revolutionary times, in 
New England as well as New York ; but it 
always seems to me more an English than a 
Dutch fashion. Mr. Gabriel Furman, in his 
manuscript Commonplace Book, dated 1810, 
now owned by the Long Island Historical 
Society, tells of one groom \vhom he remem- 
S . 6s 



COLONIAL DAYS 

bered who appeared on the first Sunday after 
his marriage attired in white broadcloth ; on 
the second, in brilliant blue and gold ; on the 
third, in peach-bloom with pearl buttons. The 
bride's dress, wholly shadowed by all this mag- 
nificence, is not even named. Mrs. Vanderbilt 
tells of a Flatbush bride of the last century, 
who was married in a fawn-colored silk over 
a light-blue damask petticoat. The wedding- 
waistcoat of the groom was made of the 
same light-blue damask, — a delicate and 
deferential compliment. Often it was the 
custom for the bridal pair to enter the 
church after the service began, thus giving an 
opportunity for the congregation to enjoy 
thoroughly the wedding-finery. Whether 
bride and groom were permitted to sit to- 
gether within the church, I do not know. Of 
course ordinarily the seats of husband and 
wife were separate. It would seem but a 
poor show, with the bride in a corner with a 
lot of old ladies, and the groom up in the 
gallery. 

On Long Island the gayety at the home of 

the bride's parents was often followed on the 

succeeding day by " open house " at the 

house of the groom's parents, when the wed- 

66 



IN OLD NEW YORK 

ding-party, bridesmaids and all, helped to 
keep up the Hfe of the wedding-day. An 
old letter says of weddings in the city of 
New York : — 

"The Gentlemen's Parents keep Open house 
just in the same manner as the Bride's Parents. 
The Gentlemen go from the Bridegi-oom's house to 
drink Punch with and give Joy to his Father. The 
Bride's visitors go in the same manner from the 
Bride's to her mother's to pay their compliments to 
her. There is so much driving about at these 
times that in our narrow streets there is some dan- 
ger. The Wedding-house resembles a bee-hive. 
Company perpetually flying in and out." 

All this was in vogue by the middle of the 
last century. There was no leaving home by 
bride and groom just when every one wanted 
them, — no tiresome, tedious wedding-journey; 
all cheerfully enjoyed the presence of the 
bride, and partook of the gayety the wedding 
brought. In the country, up the Hudson 
and on Long Island, it was lengthened out by 
a bride-visiting, — an entertaining of the bridal 
party from day to day by various hospitable 
friends and relations for many miles around; 
and this bride-visiting was usually made on 
horseback. 

67 



COLONIAL DAYS 

Let us picture a bride-visiting in spring- 
time on Long Island, where, as Hendrick 
Hudson said, "the land was pleasant with 
grass and flowers and goodly trees as ever 
seen, and very sweet smells came therefrom." 
The fair bride, with her happy husband ; the 
gayly dressed bridesmaids, in silken petti- 
coats, and high-heeled scarlet shoes, with rolled 
and powdered hair dressed with feathers and 
gauze, riding a-pillion behind the groom's 
young friends, in satin knee-breeches, and gay 
coats and cocked hats, — all the accompanying 
young folk in the picturesque and gallant dress 
of the times, and gay with laughter and happy 
voices, — a sight pretty to see in the vil- 
lage streets, or, fairer still, in the country 
lanes, where the woods were purely starred and 
gleaming with the radiant dogwood ; or roads 
where fence-lines were " white with blossom- 
ing cherry-trees as if touched with lightest 
snow; " or where pink apple-blossoms flushed 
the fields and dooryards ; or, sweeter far, 
where the flickering shadows fell through a 
bridal arch of the pale green feathery foliage 
of the abundant flowering locust-trees, whose 
beautiful hanging racemes of exquisite pink- 
flushed blossoms cast abroad a sensuous per- 
68 



IN OLD NEW YORK 

fume like orange blossoms, which fitted the 
warmth, the glowing sunlight, the fair bride, 
the beginning of a new life ; — let us picture 
in our minds this June bride-visiting; we have 
not its like to-day in quaintness, simplicity, 
and beauty. 



6g 



COLONIAL DAYS 



CHAPTER IV 
TOWN LIFE 

The earlier towns in New Netherland 
gathered usually closely around a fort, both 
for protection and companionship. In New 
Amsterdam, as in Albany, this fort was an 
intended refuge against possible Indian 
attacks, and also in New Amsterdam the 
established quarters in the new world of the 
Dutch West India Company. As the set- 
tlement increased, roads were laid out in the 
little settlement leading from the fort to any 
other desired point on the lower part of the 
island. Thus Heere Straat, the Breede 
Weg, or Broadway, led from the fort of New 
Amsterdam to the common pasture-lands. 
Hoogh Straat, now Stone Street, was evolved 
from part of the road which led down to the 
much-used Ferry to Long Island, at what is 
now Peck Slip. Whitehall Street was the 
shortest way to the East River. In front of 
70 



IN OLD NEW YORK 

the fort was the Bowling Green. Other 
streets were laid out, or rather grew, as 
needs increased. They were irregular in 
width and wandering in direction. They 
were not paved nor kept in good order, and 
at night were scarcely lighted. 

In December, 1697, city lamps were or- 
dered in New York " in the dark time of the 
moon, for the ease of the inhabitants. " Every 
seventh house was to cause a lanthorn and 
candle to be hung out on a pole, the expense 
to be equally shared by the seven neigh- 
bors, and a penalty of ninepence was de- 
creed for every default. And perhaps the 
watch called out in New York, as did the 
watch in Old York, in London and other 
English cities, " Lanthorne, and a whole 
candell-light ! Hang out your lights here." 
An old chap-book has a watchman's rhyme 
beginning, — 

" A light here ! maids, hang out your light, 
And see your horns be clear and bright 
That so your candle clear may shine," etc. 

Broad Street was in early days a canal or 

inlet of the sea, and was called De Heere 

Graft, and extended from the East River to 

Wall Street. Its waters, as far as Exchange 

71 



COLONIAL DAYS 

Place, rose and fell with the tide. It was 
crossed by several foot-bridges and a broader 
bridge at Hoogh Straat, or Stone Street, 
which bridge became a general meeting- 
place, a centre of trade. And when the bur- 
ghers and merchants decided to meet regu- 
larly at this bridge every Friday morning, 
they thus and then and there established the 
first Exchange in New York City. It is 
pleasant to note, in spite of the many miles 
of city growth, how closely the exchange 
centres have remained near their first home. 
In 1660 the walks on the banks of the Graft 
were paved, and soon it was bordered by the 
dwellings of good citizens; much favored on 
account of the homelikeness, so Mr. Janvier 
suggests, of having a good, strong-smelling 
canal constantly under one's nose, and ever- 
present the pleasant familiar sight of squat 
sailor-men and squat craft before one's eyes. 
In 1676, when simple and primitive ways of 
trade were vanishing and the watercourse 
was no longer useful or needful, the Heere 
Graft was filled in — reluctantly, we can be- 
lieve — and became Broad Street. 

The first mention of street-cleaning was in 
1695, when Mr. Vanderspiegle undertook the 
72 



IN OLD NEW YORK 

job for thirty pounds a year. By 1701 con- 
siderable pains was taken to clean the city, 
and to remove obstructions in the public 
ways. Every Friday dirt was swept by each 
citizen in a heap in front of his or her house, 
and afterwards carted away by public cart- 
men, who had threepence a load if the citizen 
shovelled the dirt into the cart, sixpence if 
the cartman loaded his cart himself. Broad 
Street was cleaned by a public scavenger at 
a salary of ;^40 per annum paid by the city ; 
for the dirt from other streets was constantly 
washed into it by rains, and it was felt that 
Broad Street residents should not be held 
responsible for other people's dirt. Dump- 
ing-places were established. Regard was paid 
from an early date to preserving " the Com- 
mons." It was ordered that lime should not 
be burnt thereon ; that no hoopsticks or sap- 
lings growing thereon should be cut ; no tim- 
ber taken to make into charcoal ; no turfs or 
sods carried av/ay therefrom; no holes dug 
therein ; no rubbish be deposited thereon. 

Within the city walls all was orderly and 
quiet. "All persons who enter y® gates of 
y® citty with slees, carts and horses, horse- 
back, not to ride faster than foot-tap." The 
73 



COLONIAL DAYS 

carters were forced to dismount and walk at 
their horses' heads. All moved slowly in the 
town streets. Living in a fortified town, 
they still were not annoyed by discharge of 
guns, for the idle ^'fyring of pistells and 
gunns " was prohibited on account of " ill- 
conveniants." 

The first houses were framed and clap- 
boarded ; the roofs were thatched with reeds ; 
the chimneys were catted, made of logs of 
wood filled and covered with clay; sometimes 
even of reeds and mortar, — for there were, 
of course, at first no bricks. Hayricks stood 
in the public streets. Hence fires were fre- 
quent in the town, breaking out in the wooden 
catted chimneys; and the destruction of the 
inflammable chimneys was decreed by the 
magistrates. In 1648 it was ordered in 
New Amsterdam that no " wooden or platted 
chimney " should be built south of the Fresh- 
water Pond. Fire-wardens — brandt-meesters 
— were appointed, who searched constantly 
and pryingly for "foul chimney-harts," and 
fined careless housekeepers therefor when 
they found them. 

It is really surprising as well as amusing 
to see how the citizens resented this effort 
74 



IN OLD NEW YORK 

for their safety, this espionage over their 
hearthstones; and especially the wives 
resented the snooping in their kitchens. 
They abused the poor schout who inspected 
the chimney-hearths, calling him "a little 
cock, booted and spurred," and other demean- 
ing names. In 1658 Maddaleen Dirck, as 
she passed the door of the fire-warden, called 
out tantalizingly to him, "There is the 
chimney-sweep at his door, — his chimney is 
always well-swept." She must have been 
well scared and truly repentant at the enor- 
mity of her offence when she was brought up 
before the magistrates and accused of having 
" insulted the worshipful fire-warden on the 
highway, and incited a riot." 

In spite of vigilance and in spite of laws, 
foul chimneys were constantly found. We 
hear of the town authorities "reciting that 
they have long since condemned flag-roofs, 
and wooden and platted chimneys, but their 
orders have been neglected, and several fires 
have occurred; therefore they amplify their 
former orders as follows: All flag-roofs, 
wooden chimneys, hay-barracks, and hay- 
stacks shall be taken down within four months, 
in the penalty of twenty-five guilders." 
75 



COLONIAL DAYS 

The magistrates further equipped the town 
against conflagration by demanding payment 
of a beaver skin from each house, to purchase 
with the collected sum two hundred and fifty 
leather fire-buckets from the Fatherland. 
But delays were frequent in ocean transporta- 
tion, and the shoemakers in town finally made 
the fire-buckets. They were placed in ten 
groups in various houses throughout the town. 
For their good order and renewal, each chim- 
ney was thereafter taxed a guilder a year. 
By 1738, two engines with small, solid 
wooden wheels or rollers were imported from 
England, and cared for with much pride. 

In Albany similar wooden chimneys at 
first were built; we find contractors deliver- 
ing reeds for roofs and chimneys. *'Fire- 
leathes " and buckets were ordered. Buckets 
were owned by individuals and the town; 
were marked with initials for identification. 
Many stood a century of use, and still exist 
as cherished relics. The manner of bucket- 
service was this : As soon as an alarm of fire 
was given by shouts or bell-ringing, all citi- 
zens of all classes at once ran to the scene of 
the conflagration. All who owned buckets 
carried them, and from open windows other 
76 



IN OLD NEW YORK 

fire-buckets were flung out on the streets by 
persons who were delayed for a few moments 
by any cause. The running crowd seized the 
buckets, and on reaching the fire a double 
line was made from the fire to the river. 
The buckets filled with water were passed 
up the line to the fire, the empty buckets 
down. Any one who attempted to break the 
line was promptly soused with a bucket of 
water. When all was over, the fire-warden 
took charge of the buckets, and as soon as 
possible the owners appeared, and each 
claimed and carried home his ovvrn buckets. 

There was a police department in New 
Amsterdam as well as a fire department. In 
1658 the burgomasters and schepens ap- 
pointed a ratel-wackt, or rattle-watch, of ten 
watchmen, of whom Lodewyck Pos was Cap- 
tain. Their wages were high, — twenty -four 
stuyvers (about fifty cents) each a night, and 
plenty of firewood. The Captain collected 
fifty stuyvers a month from each house, — not 
as has since been collected in like manner 
for the private bribing of the police, but as a 
legalized method of paying expenses. The 
rules for the watch are amusing, but cannot 
be given in full. They sometimes slept on 
77 



COLONIAL DAYS 

duty, as they do now, and paid a fine of ten 
stuyvers for each offence. They could not 
swear, nor fight, nor be " unreasonable ; " and 
" when they receive their quarter-money, they 
shall not hold any gathering for drink nor 
any club meeting." 

Attention is called to one rule then in 
force : " If a watchman receive any sum of 
money as a fee, he shall give the same to the 
Captain ; and this fee so brought in shall be 
paid to the City Treasurer " — oh the good 
old times! 

The presence of a considerable force of 
troops was a feature of life in some towns. 
The soldiers were well cared for when quar- 
tered within the fort, sleeping on good, soft, 
goose-feather beds, with warm homespun 
blankets and even with linen sheets, all hired 
from the Dutch vroiiws ; and supplied during 
the winter with plentiful loads of firewood, 
several hundred, through levy on the inhab- 
itants ; good hard wood, too, — " no watte 
Pyn wood, willige, oly noote, nor Linde- 
wood " (which was intended for English, but 
needs translation into "white pine, willow, 
butternut, nor linden " ). 

No doubt the soldiers came to be felt a 
78 



IN OLD NEW YORK 

great burden, for often they were billeted in 
private houses. We jEind one citizen writing 
seriously what reads amusingly like modern 
slang, — that "they made him weary." An- 
other would furnish bedding, provisions, any- 
thing, if he need not have any soldier- 
boarders assigned to him. One of the 
twenty-three clauses of the "Articles of 
Surrender" of the Dutch was that the 
"townsmen of Manhattans shall not have any 
soldiers quartered upon them without being 
satisfied and paid for them by their officers." 
In Governor Nicholl's written instructions 
to the commander at Fort Albany, he urges 
him not to lend " too easey an eare " to 
the soldiers' complaints against their land- 
lords. 

Since in the year 1658 the soldiers of 
New Amsterdam paid but twenty cents a 
week for quarters when lodged with a citi- 
zen, it is not surprising that their presence 
was not desired. A soldier's pay was four 
dollars a month. 

They were lawless fellows, too lazy to chop 

wood for their fires; they had to be punished 

for burning up for firewood the stockades 

they were enlisted to protect. Their duties 

79 



COLONIAL DAYS 

were slight, — a drill in the morning, no 
sentry work during the day, a watch over the 
city gates at night, and cutting wood. The 
military code of the day reveals a very 
lax condition of discipline; it was n't really 
much of an army in Dutch days. And as 
for the Fort and the Battery in the town of 
New Amsterdam, read Mr. Janvier's papers 
thereon to learn fully their innocuous pre- 
tence of warlikeness. 

There was very irregular foreign and in- 
land mail service. It is with a retrospec- 
tively pitying shiver that we read a notice, as 
late as 1730, that "whoever inclines to per- 
form the foot -post to Albany this winter may 
make application to the Post-Master. " Later 
we find the postmaster leisurely collecting 
the mail during several weeks for "the first 
post to Albany this winter." Of course this 
foot-post was only made when the river was 
frozen over; swift sloops carried the summer 
mail up the river in two or three weeks, — 
sometimes in only ten days from New York 
to Albany. I can fancy the lonesome post 
journeying alone up the solemn river, under 
the awe-full shadow of old Cro'nest, some- 
times climbing the icy Indian paths with 
80 



IN OLD NEW YORK 

yS'Sporeiiy oftener, I hope, skating swiftly 
along, as a good son of a Hollander should, 
and longing every inch of the way for spring 
and the " breaking-up " of the river. 

In 1672, " Indian posts" carried the Albany 
winter mail; trustworthy redmen, whose 
endurance and honesty were at the service 
of their white friends. 

The first regular mail started by mounted 
post from New York for Boston on January 
I, 1673. His "portmantles " were crammed 
with letters and " small portable goods " and 
** divers bags." He was "active, stout, 
indefatigable, and honest." He could not 
change horses till he reached Hartford. He 
was ordered to keep an eye out for the best 
ways through forests, and accommodations at 
fords, ferries, etc., and to watch for all 
fugitive soldiers and servants, and to be 
kind to all persons journeying in his com- 
pany. While he was gone eastward a locked 
box stood in the office of the Colonial Secre- 
tary at New York to collect the month's 
mail. The mail the post brought in return, 
being prepaid, was carried to the "coffee- 
house," put on a table, well thumbed over by 
all who cared to examine it, and gradually 
6 81 



COLONIAL DAYS 

distributed, two or three weeks' delay not 
making much difference any way. 

As in all plantations in a new land, there 
was for a time in New Netherland a lack of 
servants. Complaints were sent in 1649 to 
the States-General of " the fewness of boors 
and farm-servants. " Domestic servants were 
not found in many households; the capable 
wife and daughters performed the housework 
and dairy work. As soon as servants were 
desired they were speedily procured from 
Africa. The Dutch brought the first negro 
slaves to America. In the beginning these 
slaves in New Netherland were the property 
of the Dutch West India Company, which 
rented their services. The company owned 
slaves from the year 1625, when it first 
established its authority, and promised to 
each patroon twelve black men and women 
from ships taken as prizes. In 1644 it 
manumitted twelve of the negroes who had 
worked faithfully nearly a score of years in 
servitude. In 1652 the Government in 
Holland consented to the exportation of 
slaves to the colony for sale. In 1664 Gov- 
ernor Stuyvesant writes of an auction of 
negroes that they brought good prices, and 
82 



IN OLD NEW YORK 

were a great relief to the garrison in supply- 
ing funds to purchase food. Thus did the 
colony taste the ease of ill-gotten wealth. 
Though the Duke of York and his governors 
attempted to check the slave-trade, by the 
end of the century the negroes had increased 
much in numbers in the colony. In the Kip 
family were twelve negro house-servants. 
Rip van Dam had five; Colonel de Peyster 
and the Widow Van Courtlandt had each 
seven adult servants. Colonel Bayard, Wil- 
liam Beeckman, David Provoost, and Madam 
Van Schaick each had three. 

On Long Island slaves abounded. It is 
the universal testimony that they were 
kindly treated by the Dutch, — too kindly, 
our English lady thought, who rented out her 
slaves. Masters were under some bonds to 
the public. They could not, under Dutch 
rule, whip their slaves without authori- 
zation from the government. The letters in 
the Lloyd Collection in regard to the slave 
Obium are striking examples of kindly con- 
sideration, and of constant care and thought 
for his comfort and happiness. 

The wages of a hired servant-girl in New 
York in 1655 were three dollars and a half 
83 



COLONIAL DAYS 

a month, which was very good pay when we 
consider the purchasing power of money at 
that time. It is not till the eighteenth cen- 
tury that we read of the beginning of our vast 
servant-supply of Irish servants. 

There was much binding out of children 
and young folk for terms of service. In 
Stuyvesant's time several invoices of Dutch 
children from the almshouses were sent to 
America to be put to service, and the official 
letters concerning them show much kindli- 
ness of thought and intent towards these 
little waifs and strays. Early in the next 
century a sad little band of Palatines was 
bound out in New York families. It may 
prove of interest to give one of the bonds 
of indenture of a house-servant in Albany. 

"This Indenture witnesseth that Aulkey Hu- 
bertse, Daughter of John Hubertse, of the Colony 
of Rensselaerwyck deceased hath bound herself 
as a Meniall Servant, and by these presents doth 
voluntary and of her own free will and accord bind 
herself as a Meniall Servant unto John Delemont 
of the City of Albany, weaver, by and with the 
consent of the Deacons of the Reformed Dutch 
Church in the Citty of Albany, who are as over- 
seers in the disposal of the said Aulkey Hubertse 
to serve from the date of these present Indentures 

84 



IN OLD NEW YORK 

unto the full end and term of time that the said 
Aulkey Hubertse shall come to Age, all which time 
fully to be Compleat and ended, during all which 
term the said servant her said Master faithfully 
shall serve, his secrets keep, his lawful commands 
gladly everywhere obey, she shall do no Damage 
to her said Master nor see it to be done by others 
without letting or giving notice thereof to her said 
Master : she shall not waste her Master's goods or 
lend them unlawfully to any. At Cards, Dice, or 
any unlawful Game she shall not play whereby her 
said Master may have Damage : with her own 
goods or the goods of others during the said Term, 
without License from her said Master she shall 
neither buy or sell: she shall not absent herself 
day or night from her Master's service without 
his Leave, nor haunt Ale-houses, Taverns, or Play- 
houses, but in all things as a faithful servant, she 
shall behave herself towards her said Master and 
all his during the said Term. And the said Master 
during the said Term, shall find and provide suffi- 
cient Wholesome and compleat meat and drink, 
washing, lodging, and apparell and all other Neces- 
sarys fit for such a servant : and it is further agreed 
between the said Master and Servant in case the 
said Aulkey Hubertse should contract Matrimony 
before she shall come to Age then the said Servant 
is to be free from her said Master's service by virtue 
thereof : and at the expiration of her said servitude, 
her said Master John Delemont shall find provide 
for and deliver unto his said servant double appar- 
85 



COLONIAL DAYS 

ell, that is to say, apparell fit for to have and to 
wear as well on the Lords Day as working days, 
both linning and woolen stockings and shoes and 
other Necessarys meet for such a servant to have 
and to wear, and for the true performance of all 
and every of said Covenant and Agreements the 
said parties bind themselves unto each other by 
these presents." 

This indenture was signed and sealed in 
the year 1710, and varied little from those of 
previous years. Sometimes the apparel was 
fully described, and was always good and 
substantial — and Sunday attire was usually 
furnished. Sarah Davis, bound out in 
Albany in 1684, was to be taught to read and 
knit stockings ; was to have silk hoods and a 
silk scarf for church wear, and substantial 
petticoats and waistcoats, some of home- 
spun, some of "jersey-spun," others of "car- 
soway," which was kersey. 

" Redemptioners," bound for a term of 
service as domestic and farm servants, also 
came from the various European States ; and 
good servants often did they prove, and good 
citizens, too, when their terms of service 
expired. There also opened in this emigra- 
tion of redemptioners a vast opportunity for 



IN OLD NEW YORK 

adventure. In the " New York Gazette " of 
March 15, 1736, we read of one servant-girl 
adventurer: — 

"We hear that about two years ago a certain 
Irish gentlewoman was brought into this province 
a servant, but she pretended to be a great fortune 
worth some thousands (was called the Irish Beauty). 
Her master confirming the same a certain young 
man (Mr. S***ds), courted her; and she seem- 
ingly shy, her master for a certain sum of money 
makes up the match, and they were married and 
go to their country-seat ; but she not pleased with 
that pursuades her husband to remove to the city 
of New York and set up a great tavern. They did 
so. Next she pursuades her husband to embark 
for Ireland to get her great portion. When he 
comes there he finds her mother a weeder of gar- 
dens to get bread. In his absence Madam be- 
comes acquainted with one Davis, and they sell 
and pack up her husband's effects, which were 
considerable, and embark for North Carolina. 
When they come there they pass for man and 
wife, and he first sells the negroes and other effects, 
then sells her clothes and at last he sells her for a 
servant, and with the produce returns to his wife 
in Rhode Island, he having made a very good 
voyage." 

They were constantly eloping with their 
masters' or mistresses' wardrobes, some- 
S7 



COLONIAL DAYS 

times with portions of both, and setting up 
as gentlefolk on their ov/n account. We 
find one Jersey girl running a fine rig: 
dressed in a velvet coat and scarlet knee- 
breeches, with a sword, cocked hat, periwig, 
and silken hose, she had a gay carouse in 
New York tap-houses and tea-gardens, as 
long as her stolen twenty pounds lasted; but 
with an empty stomach, she ceased to play 
the lad, and went sadly to the stone ketch. 
I turn regretfully from the redemptioners ; 
they were the most picturesque and romance- 
bearing element of the community. 

But little is known of the early practice of 
medicine in New Netherland, less than of the 
other American colonies, and that little is 
not of much importance. It must be remem- 
bered that the times were what Lowell has 
felicitously termed the twilight through 
which alchemy was passing into chemistry, 
and the science of medicine partook of mys- 
ticism. Astrology and alchemy were not yet 
things of the past. From the beginning of 
the settlement the West India Company 
paid a surgeon (Jacob Varravanger was the 
name of one) to live in New Amsterdam and 
care for the health of the Company's " ser- 
88 



IN OLD NEW YORK 

vants." But soon so many "freemen" came 
— that is, not in the pay of the Company — 
that some doubts arose in the minds of the 
Council whether it would not be better to 
save the salary, by trusting to independent 
practitioners. There were three such in 
New Amsterdam in 1652. They made pills 
and a terrible dose of rhubarb, senna, and 
port-wine, called " Vienna Drink. " But folk 
were discouragingly healthy in the little town 
in spite of poor water, and lack of drainage, 
and filth in the streets, and the Graft. Van 
der Donck said, " Galens have meagre soup 
in that country; " and soon the poor doctors, 
to add to their income, petitioned the Direc- 
tor that none but surgeons should be allowed 
to shave people. This was a weighty matter, 
and after profound consideration, the Coun- 
cil gave the following answer : — 

" That shaving doth not appertain exclusively to 
chirugery, but is only an appanage thereof. That 
no man can be prevented from operating herein 
upon himself^ or doing another this friendly act, 
provided that it be through courtesy, and that he 
do not receive any money for it, and do not keep 
an open-shop of that sort, which is hereby forbid- 
den, declaring in regard to the last request, this 
act to belong to chirtigery and the health of man." 

89 



COLONIAL DAYS 

And the surgeons on shore were protected 
against the ship barbers, who landed and who 
made some pretty grave mistakes when 
attempting to doctor in the town. In 1658 
Dr. Varravanger, somewhat disgusted at the 
treatment of the sick, who, if they had no 
families, had to trust to the care of stran- 
gers, established the first New York Hospi- 
tal, which was, after all, only a clean and 
suitable house with fire and wood and one 
good woman to act as matron. 

There was no lack of physicians, — half a 
dozen by 1650. A century later, the histo- 
rian of the province pronounced the towns to 
be swarming with quacks. 

One tribute to old-time medicine and New 
York medical men we owe still. The well- 
known Kiersted Ointment manufactured and 
sold in New York to-day is made from a 
receipt of old Dr. Hans Kiersted's, the best 
colonial physician of his day, who came to 
New York in 1638. The manufacture of this 
ointment is a closely guarded family secret. 
He married the daughter of the famous 
Anneke Jans; and, in the centuries that 
have passed, the descendants have had more 
profit from the ointment than from the real 
90 



IN OLD NEW YORK 

estate. There were plenty of " wise women " 
to care for the increase of the populace ; the 
New Amsterdam midwife had a house built 
for her by the government. It was a much 
respected calling. The mother of Anneke 
Jans was a midwife. They were licensed to 
practise. Here is an appointment by the 
Governor in 1670: — 

" Whereas I am given to understand that Tryntje 
Meljers ye wife of Wynant Vander pool a sworn 
and approved midwife at Albany in which Imploy- 
ment she hath Continued for y^ span of fourteen 
years past in good reputation not refusing her as- 
sistance but on y^ contrary affording her best help 
to y^ poorer sorte of people out of Christian Charity, 
as well as to ye richer sorte for reward, and there 
being severall other less skilfull women who upon 
occasion will pretend to be midwives where they 
can gain by it but refuse their helpe to y^ poore. 
These presents Certifye That I doe allow of y^ said 
Tryntje Meljers to be one of y*' profest sworne 
midwives at Albany, and that she and one more 
skilfull woman be only admitted to Undertake 
ye same there except upon Extraordinary occa- 
sions. They continuing their Charitable assist- 
ance to y^ poore & a diligent attendance on their 
calling." 

The small number of settlers, the exigen- 
cies and hardships of a planter's life, the 
91 



COLONIAL DAYS 

absence of luxuries, as well as the simplicity 
of social manners among the Dutch, prohib- 
ited anything during the rule of the Dutch 
in New Netherland which might, by a long 
and liberal stretch of phraseology or ideali- 
zation of a revered ancestry, be termed fash- 
ionable life. 

They occasionally had a merry dinner. 
Captain Beaulieu, a gay Frenchman who 
brought a prize into port, gave a costly one 
for fourteen persons ; and as he did not pay 
for it, it has passed into history. Governor 
Stuyvesant had a fine dinner given to him 
on the eve of one of his "gallant departures." 
De Vries has left us an amusing account 
of a quarrelsome feast given by the gunner 
of the Fort. Eating and drinking were ever 
the Dutchman's pleasures. 

With the establishment of English rule 
there came to the town of the Governor's 
residence, in the Province of New York as in 
the other provinces, a little stilted attempt 
at the semblance of a court. 

Formal endeavors to have something of 
the nature of a club were made under the 
English governors, to promote a social feel- 
ing in the town. A letter of the day says, 
92 



In old new YORK 

"Good correspondence is kept between the 
English and Dutch ; to keep it closer sixteen 
families (ten Dutch and six English) have 
had a constant meetting at each other's houses 
in Turnes twice every week in winter and 
now in summer once. They meet at six at 
night, and part at about eight or nine." The 
exceedingly early hours of these social func- 
tions seem to accent the simplicity of the life 
of the times even more than the absence of 
any such meetings would have done. The 
arrival of a new Governor was naturally an 
important and fashionable event. When the 
Earl and Countess of Bellomont landed in 
New York in 1698 they were, of course, 
greeted first with military salutes; four bar- 
rels of gunpowder made sufficient noise of 
welcome. Then a great dinner to a hundred 
and fifty people was given. It was presided 
over by the handsomest man in town, Mayor 
do Peyster, and the fare consisted of *Weni- 
son, turkey, chicken, goose, pigeon, duck 
and other game; mutton, beef, lamb, veal, 
pork, sausages ; with puddings, pastry, cakes 
and choicest of wines." It was a fine 
welcome, but such dinners did not come 
every day to the Governor; he had other 
93 



COLONIAL DAYS 

and sorrier gatherings in store. Soon we 
hear of him shut up eight days in succession 
in Albany (as he said in his exceedingly 
plain English) " in a close chamber with 
fifty sachems, who besides the stink of 
bear's grease with which they were plenti- 
fully bedaubed, were continually smoking 
and drinking of rum," and coming back to 
town in a "'nasty slow little sloop." No 
wonder he fell dangerously sick with the 
gout. 

Mrs. Grant, writing of New York society 
in the middle of the eighteenth century, 
said : — 

" At New York there was always a governor, a 
few troops, and a kind of little court kept ; there 
was a mixed, and in some degree polished society. 
To this the accession of many families of French 
Huguenots rather above the middling rank, con- 
tributed not a little." 

This little important circle had some fine 
balls. On January 22, 1734, one was given 
at the Fort on the birthday of the Prince of 
Wales, which lasted till four in the morning. 
Another was given in honor of the King's 
birthday. "The ladies made a splendant 
94 



IN OLD NEW YORK 

appearance. Sometimes as many as a hun- 
dred persons were present and took part." 

Occasional!}^ a little flash of gossiping 
brightness shows us a picture of the every- 
day life of the times in the capital town. 
Such a bit of eighteenth-century scandal is 
the amusing account, from Mrs. Janet Mont- 
gomery's unpublished Memoirs, of Lady 
Cornbury, wife of the Governor, Lord Corn- 
bury. She died in New York in 1706, much 
eulogized, and most ostentatiously mourned 
for by her husband. Mrs. Montgomery's 
account of her is this: — 

" The lady of this very just nobleman was equally 
a character. He had fallen in love with her ear, 
which was very beautiful. The ear ceased to please 
and he treated her with neglect. Her pin-money 
was withheld and she had no resource but begging 
and stealing. She borrowed gowns and coats and 
never returned them. As hers was the only car- 
riage in the city, the rolling of the wheels was easily 
distinguished, and then the cry in the house was 
* There comes my lady ; hide this, hide that, take 
that away.' Whatever she admired in her visit she 
was sure to send for next day. She had a fancy to 
have with her eight or ten young ladies, and make 
them do her sewing work, for who could refuse 
their daughters to my lady." 

95 



COLONIAL DAYS 

What a picture of the times ! the fashion- 
able though impecunious Englishwoman 
and the score of industrious young Dutch- 
American seamstresses sitting daily and 
most unwillingly in the Governor's parlor. 

One of the most grotesque episodes in New 
York political history, or indeed in the life 
of any public official, was the extraordinary 
notion of this same Governor, Lord Corn- 
bury, to dress in women's clothes. Lord 
Stanhope and Agnes Strickland both assert 
that when Cornbury was appointed Governor 
and told he was to represent her Majesty 
Queen Anne, he fancied he must dress as a 
woman. Other authorities attribute his 
absurd masquerade to his fond belief that 
in that garb he resembled the Queen, who 
was his cousin. Mrs. Montgomery said it 
was in consequence of a vow, and that in a 
hoop and head-dress and with fan in hand 
he was frequently seen in the evening on the 
ramparts. A portrait of him owned by Lord 
Hampton shows him in the woman's dress of 
the period, fan in hand. Truly it was, as 
Lewis Morris wrote of him to the Secretary 
of State, "a peculiar and detestable magot," 
and one which must have been most odious 
96 



IN OLD NEW YORK 

and trying to honest, manly New Yorkers, 
and especially demoralizing to the soldiers 
before whom he paraded in petticoats. When 
summarily deposed by his cousin from his 
governorship, he was promptly thrust into a 
New York debtor's prison, where he lan- 
guished till the death of his father made him 
third Earl of Clarendon. 



97 



COLONIAL DAYS 



CHAPTER V 
DUTCH TOWN HOMES 

The first log houses of the settlers, with 
their **reeden roofs," were soon supplanted 
by a more substantial form of edifice, Dutch, 
naturally, in outline. They were set with 
the gable-end to the street and were often 
built of Dutch brick, or, at any rate, the 
gable-ends were of brick. 

Madam Knights' description of the city of 
New York and the houses is wonderfully 
clear, as is every account from her graphic 
pen, but very short : — 

*' The Buildings are Brick Generaly, very stately 
and high though not altogether like ours in Boston. 
The Bricks in some of the Houses are of divers 
Coullers and laid in Checkers, being glazed, look 
very agreable. The inside of them is neat to 
admiration ; the wooden work, for only the v/alls 
are plaster'd, and the Sumers and Gist are planed 
and kept very white scour'd as so is all the parti- 
tions if made of Bords." 
98 



IN OLD NEW YORK 

Albany long preserved its Dutch appearance 
and Dutch houses. Peter Kalm's description 
of the city of Albany is a good one, and would 
well answer for other New York towns : — 

"The houses in this town are very neat, and 
partly built with stones covered with shingles of the 
White Pine. Some are slated with tiles from Hol- 
land, because the clay of this neighborhood is not 
reckoned fit for tiles. Most of the houses are 
built in the old way, with the gable-end towards 
the street ; the gable-end of brick and all the other 
walls of planks. The gutters on the roofs reach 
almost to the middle of the street. This preserves 
the walls from being damaged by the rain, but it 
is extremely disagreeable in rainy weather for the 
people in the streets, there being hardly any means 
of avoiding the water from the gutters. 

" The street doors are generally in the middle of 
the houses and on both sides are seats, on which, 
during fair weather the people spend almost the 
whole day, especially on those which are in the 
shadow of the houses. In the evening these seats 
are covered with people of both sexes, but this is 
rather troublesome, as those who pass by are obliged 
to greet everybody unless they will shock the polite- 
ness of the inhabitants of this town. The streets 
are broad and some of them are paved ; in some 
parts they are hned with trees. The long streets 
are almost parallel to the river, and the others 
intersect them at right angles." 

99 



COLONIAL DAYS 

Rev. Samuel Chandler, chaplain of one of 
the Massachusetts regiments, stopped sev- 
eral days in Albany in the year 1755. He 
tells of the streets with rows of small button- 
trees, of the brick houses curiously flowered 
with black brick and dated with the same, 
the Governor's house having "two black 
brick-hearts." The houses one story high 
with their gable-ends "notched like steps" 
(he might have said with corbel-steps), were 
surmounted with vanes, the figures of horses, 
lions, geese, and sloops. There were window 
shutters with loop-holes outside the cellars. 
Smith, the historian of New York, writing at 
the same time, calls the houses of all the 
towns, "built of brick in Dutch taste." 
Daniel Denton, writing as early as 1670, 
tells of the "red and black tile (of New 
York) giving at a distance a pleasing aspect 
to the Spectators." All the old sketches of 
the town which exist, crude as they are, cer- 
tainly do present a pleasing aspect. 

The chief peculiarity of these houses were 
the high roofs; some were extraordinarily 
steep and thus afforded a garret, a loft, and 
a cock-loft. There was reason and economy 
in this form of roof. The shingle covering 
100 



IN OLD NEW YORK 

was less costly than the v/alls, and the con- 
traction in size of second-story rooms was 
not great. 

Very few of the steep roofs in the earliest 
days had eave-troughs, hence the occasional 
use in early deeds and conveyances of the 
descriptive term ''free-drip." At a later 
date troughs were made of sections of the 
bark of some tree (said to be birch) which 
the Indians brought into town and sold to 
house builders. Then came metal spouts 
projecting several feet, as noted by Kalm. 
In 1789, when Morse's Geography was issued, 
he speaks of the still projecting water-spouts 
or gutters of Albany, "rendering it almost 
dangerous to walk the streets on a rainy day ; " 
but in New York more modified fashions 
obtained long before that time. 

The windows were small; some had two 
panes. When we learn that the ordinary 
panes of glass imported at that time were 
in size only six inches by eight inches, we 
can see that the windows were only loop- 
holes. 

The front doors were usually divided as in 
Holland, into an upper and lower half. 
They were in early days hung on strap- 



COLONIAL DAYS 

hinges, afterwards on heavy iron hinges. In 
the upper half of the door, or in a sort of 
transom over the door, were set two round 
bull's-eyes of heavy greenish glass, just as 
are seen in Holland. Often the door held 
a knocker of brass or of iron. The door 
usually opened with a latch. 

The inventories of the household effects of 
many of the early citizens of New York 
might be given, to show the furnishings of 
these homes. I choose the belongings of 
Captain Kidd to show that *'as he sailed, as 
he sailed" he left a very comfortable home 
behind him. He was, when he set up house- 
keeping with his wife Sarah in 1692, not at 
all a bad fellow, and certainly lived well. 
He possessed these handsome and abundant 
house furnishings: — 

One dozen Turkey work Three suits of curtains and 

chairs. valances. 

One dozen double-nailed Four bedsteads. 

leather chairs. Ten blankets. 

Two dozen single-nailed One glass case. 

leather chairs. One dozen drinking-glasses. 

One Turkey worked carpet. Four tables. 

One oval table. Five carpets or rugs. 

Three chests of drawers. One screen frame. 
Four looking-glasses. 

Four feather beds, bolsters, Two stands. 

and pillows. One desk. 
102 



IN OLD NEW YORK 



Two dressing boxes. 

One close stool. 

One warming pan. 

Two bed pans. 

Three pewter tankards. 

Four kettles. 

Two iron pots. 

One skillet. 

Three pairs of fire irons. 

One pair of andirons. 

Three chafing dishes. 

One gridiron. 

One flesh fork. 

One brass skimmer. 

Four brass candlesticks. 

Two pewter candlesticks. 

Four tin candlesticks. 

One brass pestle. 

One iron mortar. 

Parcel linen sheets, table 



2)4. dozen pewter plates. 
Five pewter basins. 
Thirteen pewter dishes. 
Five leather buckets. 
One pipe Madeira wine. 
One half-pipe " " 
Three barrels pricked cider. 
Two pewter salt-cellars. 
Three boxes smoothing irons. 
Six heaters. 

One pair small andirons. 
Three pairs tongs. 
Two fire shovels. 
Two fenders. 
One spit. 
One jack. 
One clock. 
One coat of arms. 
Three quilts, 
cloths, napkins, value thirty 



dollars. 

One hundred and four ounces silver plate, value three hun- 
dred dollars. 

The early New Englanders sat in their 
homes on stools and forms, and very rarely 
on chairs. It is not so easy to know of 
Dutch furnishings, for the words stoel and setel 
and banck, which are found in early invento- 
ries, all mean a chair, but also may not have 
meant in colonial days what we now desig- 
nate as a chair. A stoel ^2iS really a seat of 
any kind; and stoels there were in jDlenty 
among the first settlers. As Cowper says: 
103 



COLONIAL DAYS 

" Necessity invented stools, 
Convenience next suggested elbow-chairs, 
And Luxury the accomplished Sofa last." 

In this natural succession came the seats 
of the colonists. The leather chairs with 
double rows of nails — in Captain Kidd's 
list — were a very substantial and handsome 
piece of furniture. 

Tables there were in all houses, and look- 
ing-glasses in all well-to-do homes. The 
stands of Captain Kidd were small tables. 
The carpets named after the tables were 
doubtless table-covers. The early use of the 
word was always a cover for a table. 

A truly elegant piece of furniture — one in 
use by well-to-do folk in all the colonies — 
was a cupboard. Originally simply a table 
for the display of cups and other vessels, it 
came to have shelves and approach in form 
our sideboard. An inventory of a New York 
citizen of the year 1690 names a " Holland 
cupboard furnished with earthenware and 
purslin" worth fifteen pounds. Another 
owned a French nut-wood cupboard of about 
the same value. Cupboard-cloths usually 
accompanied them. A few of these cup- 
boards still exist, usually their exact history 
104 



IN OLD NEW YORK 

forgotten, but still known as " Holland cup- 
boards." As long as the inventories of 
estates of deceased persons were made out 
and registered with much minuteness of de- 
tail, a single piece of furniture could be 
traced readily from heir to heir, but unfor- 
tunately only the older inventories display 
this minuteness. 

One unusual word may be noted, which is 
found in Nev/ York inventories, boilstedy 
Misted, or billsted — as "a boilsted bed," "a 
boilsted bureau." The "Century Diction- 
ary " gives Misted as the native name of the 
American sweet-gum tree, the liquidambar, 
but Mr. Watson says boilsted or bilsted meant 
maple, — hence these articles meant a bureau 
of maplewood, etc. 

A very common form of bedstead in early 
days, both in tovm and farm houses, was the 
one built into the house, scarcely more than 
a bench to hold the bedding, usually set into 
an alcove or recess. In a contract for the 
"Ferry House," built in Brooklyn in 1665 
(the house in which the ferry-master lived), 
we read one clause thus: "to wainscot the 
east side the whole length of the house, and 
in the recess two bedsteads (betste) one in 
105 



COLONIAL DAYS 

the front room and one in the inside room, 
with a pantry at the end of the bedstead " 

This alcove betste was much like a cup- 
board; it had doors which closed over it 
when unoccupied and shut it from view. 
This does not seem very tidy from our 
modern point of view, but the heavily 
curtained and upholstered beds of other 
countries gave but little more opportunity of 
airing. Adam Roelandsen, the first New 
York schoolmaster, had these betste built in 
his house; and Jan Peeck, the founder of 
Peekskill, had four betste in his country 
home, as certainly were needed by a man 
who had — so he said — "a house full of chil- 
dren and more besides." 

The sloep-bancky or slaiv-bunky was another 
form, a folding-bed. This was also set 
within closet doors or hanging curtains. It 
was an oblong frame filled in with a network 
of rope or strips of wood, set apart like the 
slats of a bed. This frame was fastened to 
the wall at one end, the bed's head, with 
heavy hinges ; and at night it was placed in 
a horizontal position, and the unhinged end, 
or foot of the bed, was supported on heavy 
turned legs which fitted into sockets in the 
io6 



IN OLD NEW YORK 

frame. When not in use, the frame was 
hooked up against the wall and covered with 
the curtains or doors. 

Other sloep-bancks were stationary. One 
sold in Albany in 1667 to William Brouwer 
was worth ten guilders. Parson Chandler as 
late as 1755 said the beds in Albany were 
simply wooden boxes, each with feather-bed, 
undersheet, and blanket cover. The kermis 
bed, on which the Labadist fathers slept in 
Brooklyn, was a pallet bed. Another bed- 
stead often named was the trecke-bedde, or the 
sloep-banck ap rollen, which, as its name 
implies, was on rollers. It was a trundle- 
bed, and in the daytime was rolled under a 
high-post bedstead, if there were one in the 
room, and concealed by the valance of calico 
or chiney. 

The beds were deep and soft, of prime 
geese feathers. For many years the custom 
obtained of sleeping on one feather-bed and 
under another of somewhat lighter weight. 
The pillow-cases, called "pillow-bears," or 
pillow-clothes, were often of checked linen. 
The hangings of the bed when it was cur- 
tained were also, in families of moderate 
means, of checked and striped linen, in 
107 



COLONIAL DAYS 

wealthier houses of kidderminster, camlet, 
and harrateen. With English modes of living 
came English furniture; among other inno- 
vations the great carved four-poster, which, 
richly hung with valances and tester, was, 
as Mrs. Grant said, "the state-bed, the 
family Teraphim, secretly worshipped and 
only exhibited on rare occasions." The 
bedsteads of Captain Kidd with valances and 
curtains were doubtless four-posters. 

A notable feature in the house-furnishing 
of early colonial days was the abundance and 
good quality of household linen. The infre- 
quency of regular washing seasons and times 
(often domestic washing took place but once 
in three or four months) made a large amount 
of bed, table, and personal linen a matter of 
necessity in all thrifty, tidy households. 
One family, in 1704 (not a very wealthy 
one), had linen to the amount of five hundred 
dollars. Francis Rombout, one of the early 
mayors of New York, had, at the time of his 
death, in the year 1690, fifty-six diaper nap- 
kins, forty-two coarse napkins and towels, 
thirteen table-cloths of linen and diaper, 
fifty-one "pillow-bears," thirty sheets, four 
bolster-covers, ten checked "pillow-bears," 
108 



IN OLD NEW YORK 

two calico cupboard-cloths, six table-cloths, 
four check chimney-cloths, two of linen; 
worth in all, twenty-one pounds eleven 
shillings. 

Mynheer Marius, who was worth about 
fifteen thousand dollars, — a rich man, — had 
eight muslin sheets, twenty-three linen 
sheets, thirty-two pillow-cases, two linen 
table-cloths, seven diaper table-cloths, sixty- 
one diaper napkins, three " ozenbergs " nap- 
kins, sixteen small linen cupboard-cloths. 
Colonel William Smith of Long Island was 
not so rich as the last-named Dutch mer- 
chant, but he had six hundred dollars' worth 
of linen. John Bowne, the old Quaker of 
Flushing, Long Island, recorded in his 
diary, in 1691, an account of his household 
linen. He had four table-cloths, a dozen 
napkins, a dozen towels, six fine sheets, two 
cotton sheets, four coarse linen sheets, two 
fine tow sheets, two bolster cases, nine fine 
pillow-biers, four coarse pillow-biers. 

In 1776, the house furnishings of a house 
in Westchester County in the "Neutral 
Ground," were removed on account of the 
war. The linen consisted of fifty-one linen 
sheets, eleven damask table-cloths, one linen 
109 



COLONIAL DAYS 

table-cloth, twenty-one homespun cloths, 
four breakfast cloths, twelve damask nap- 
kins, fifty-six homespun napkins, fifteen 
towels, twenty-nine pillow-cases. 

This linen was usually kept in a great 
linen chest often brought from Holland. 
Made of panelled oak or of cedar, these 
chests were not only useful, but ornamental 
They were substantial enough to have lasted 
till our own day, unless wantonly destroyed 
as clumsy and cumbersome, and a few have 
survived. 

There was one display of wealth which was 
not wholly for the purpose of exhibiting the 
luxury and refinement of the housekeeper^ 
but also served as a safe investment of sur- 
plus funds, — household silver. From early 
days silver tankards, spoons, dram-cups, and 
porringers appear in inventories. Salt-cel- 
lars and beakers are somewhat rare; but as 
years crept on, candlesticks, salvers, coffee- 
pots, teakettles, snuffers, bread-baskets, and 
punch-bowls are on the list. When Captain 
Kidd, the pirate, was a happy bridegroom in 
1692, as a citizen of respectability and social 
standing, he started housekeeping with three 
hundred dollars' worth of silver. Magis- 
no 



IN OLD NEW YORK 

trate Marius had at the same time a silver 
tankard, three salt-cellars, two beakers, a 
mustard pot and spoon, twenty-seven sweet- 
meat spoons, four tumblers, nine cups each 
with two ears, a salver, a mug and cover, a 
baby's chafing-dish, a fork and cup. Gov- 
ernor Rip van Dam had in silver three 
tankards, a chafing-dish, three castors, two 
candlesticks, snuffers and tray, two salvers, 
a mug, salt-cellar and pepper-pot, and a 
large number of spoons. Abraham de Peys- 
ter had a splendid array : four tankards, two 
decanters, two dishes, three plates, eleven 
salvers, two cups and covers, two chafing- 
dishes, six porringers, four sauce-boats, two 
punch-bowls, three mugs, four sugar-dishes, 
a coffee-pot and tea-pot, seven salts and 
shovels, a saucepan, four pairs snuffers and 
stand, a mustard-pot, a bread-basket, a 
dram-bottle, tobacco-dish, nine castors, six 
candlesticks, one waiter, twenty-three forks, 
three soup-spoons, two punch ladles, ten 
table-spoons, ten teaspoons, two sugar- 
tongs; truly a display fit for a fine English 
hall. We may note in this, as in many 
other inventories, that the number of small 
pieces seems very small and inadequate; ten 
III 



COLONIAL DAYS 

teaspoons and twenty-three forks appear 
vastly disproportioned to the great pieces 
of plate. 

These outfits of silver were, of course, 
unusual, but nearly all families had some 
pieces; and even on farms there would be 
seen fine pieces of silver. 

Curious forms of Dutch silver were the 
"bite and stir" sugar boxes, often shell- 
shaped, with a partition in the middle. On 
one side was placed the loaf sugar, which 
could be nibbled with the tea; on the other, 
the powdered or granulated sugar, which 
could be stirred into the teacup with a tea- 
spoon. Another graceful piece was the ooma^ 
or sifter, for the mixed cinnamon and sugar 
with which many sprinkled their hot waffles. 
An ooma resembled a muffineer. The name 
was derived from the Dutch oom^ an uncle, 
and the article was a favorite gift of an uncle 
on the wedding day of niece or nephew. We 
find Dutch dames leaving by will "milk-pots 
shaped like a cow," a familiar form of Dutch 
silver, and can readily believe that much 
silver owned in New York was made in 
Holland. 

Coming from a country where the manufac- 

112 



IN OLD NEW YORK 

ture of porcelain and stone-ware was already 
of much importance, and the importation of 
Oriental china was considerable, it is not 
strange that we find more frequent mention 
of articles of china than in the English col- 
onies. For instance, Mayor Francis Rom- 
bouts came to this country as clerk for a 
Dutch commercial house and died in 1690. 
He had a cupboard furnished with earthen- 
ware and "purslin:" twenty-six earthen 
dishes, earthen pots, twelve earthen " cupps, " 
six "purslin cupps," six earthen " juggs," six 
pitchers, which was really a very pretty 
showing. Doubtless the "purslin" was 
Delft. In the list of early sales at Fort 
Orange, earthen-ware appears. In New 
England, in similar sales, its name would 
never be seen. 

Trim and orderly pieces of furniture, as 
well as pretty ones, were the various hang- 
ing wall-racks for plates, knives, and spoons. 
I presume they were shaped like the ones 
still in use in Holland. We find in inven- 
tories lepel-borties (which were spoon-racks) 
as early as 1664. When an oaken plate- 
rack was filled with shining pewter plates. 
Delft dishes, or even red earthen "Por- 

8 113 



COLONIAL DAYS 

tngese ware," it made a thoroughly artis- 
tic decoration for the walls of the old 
Dutch kitchen. There were also stands or 
boxes with divisions for holding knives and 
forks. 



114 



IN OLD NEW YORK 



CHAPTER VI 
DUTCH FARMHOUSES 

The old Dutch homestead of colonial times 
fitted the place and the race for which it was 
built. There was plenty of solid level earth 
for it to stand on, — so it spread out, sunny 
and long. The men who built it had never 
climbed hills or Hved on mountain-tops, nor 
did they mean to climb many stairs in their 
houses. The ceilings were low, the stairs 
short and steep, and the stories few ; a story 
and a half were enough for nearly every one. 
The heavy roof, curving slightly inward, often 
stretched out in front at the eaves to form a 
shelter for the front stoop. Sometimes in the 
rear it ran out and down over a lean-to to 
within six or eight feet from the ground. 
Sometimes dormer windows broke the long 
roof-slope and gave light to the bedrooms or 
garret within. This long roof contracted the 
walls of the second-story bedrooms, but it 
8 115 



COLONIAL DAYS 

afforded a generous, useful garret, which to 
the Dutch housekeeper was one of the best 
rooms in the house. 

The long side of the house was usually set 
to receive the southern sunshine ; if conven- 
ient, the gable-end was turned to the street or 
lane ; for, being built when there were poor 
roads and comparatively little travel, and 
when the settlers were few in number, each 
house was not isolated in lonesome woods or 
in the middle of each farm, but was set cosily 
and neighborly just as close to those of the 
other settlers as the extent of each farm 
would allow, and thus formed a little village 
street. 

The windows of these houses were small 
and had solid wooden shutters, heavily hinged 
with black-painted iron hinges. Sometimes 
a small crescent-shaped opening cut in the 
upper portion of the shutter let in a httle 
dancing ray of light at early dawn into the 
darkened room. In the village as in the city 
the stoop was an important feature of the 
house and of home life. Through the sum- 
mer months the family gathered on this out- 
door sitting-room at the close of day. 
The neighbors talked politics as they 
ii6 



IN OLD NEW YORK 

smoked their evening pipes, and the young 
folk did some mild visiting and courting. 
As the evening and pipes waned, little negro 
slaves brought comfortiers, or open metal 
dishes of living coals, to start the smoulder- 
ing tobacco afresh in the long Dutch 
pipes. 

The cellar of these old farmhouses was a 
carefully built apartment, for it played a most 
important part in the orderly round, in the 
machinery of household affairs. It was built 
with thought, for it had to be cool in summer 
and warm in winter. To accomplish the 
latter result, its few small windows and 
gratings were carefully closed and packed 
with salt hay in the autumn, and a single 
trap-door opening outside the house fur- 
nished winter entrance. Within this dark- 
ened cellar were vast food-stores which put 
to shame our modern petty purchases of 
weekly supplies. There were always found 
great bins of apples, potatoes, turnips, and 
parsnips. These vegetables always rotted a 
little toward spring and sprouted, and though 
carefully sorted out and picked over sent up 
to the kanier above a semi-musty, damp- 
earthy, rotten-appley, mouldy-potatoey smell 
117 



COLONIAL DAYS 

which, all who have encountered will agree, 
is unique and indescribable. Strongly bound 
barrels of vinegar and cider and often of rum 
lay in firm racks in this cellar; and some- 
times they leaked a little at the spigot, and 
added their sharply alcoholic fumes to the 
other cellar-smells. Great hogsheads of 
corned beef, barrels of salt pork, hams 
seething in brine ere being smoked, tonne- 
kens of salted shad and mackerel, firkins of 
butter, kilderkins of home-made lard, jars 
of pickles, kegs of pigs' feet, or souse, 
tumblers of spiced fruits, graced this noble 
cellar. On a swing-shelf were rolliches and 
head-cheese and festoons of sausages. On 
such a solid foundation, over such a storage- 
room of plenty, thrift, and prudence, stood 
that sturdy edifice, — the home-comfort of the 
New York farmer. 

On the ground-floor above were low- 
studded rooms, one called the kameVy which 
was the parlor and spare bedroom as well; 
for on its clean sanded floor often stood the 
best bedstead, of handsome carved mahogany 
posts, with splendid high-piled feather-beds, 
heavy hangings, and homespun linen sheets 
and pillow-cases. Back of this kameVy in the 
ii8 



IN OLD NEW YORK 

linter, was the milk-room. The spinning- 
room with its spinning-wheels was the sitting- 
room, or occasionally the kitchen, and the 
bedroom adjoining was called the spinning- 
room kametje. There were often four or five 
spinning-wheels in a family, and their merry 
hum meant lively work. The furniture of 
these rooms was in character much like 
that of townhouses, and all had sanded 
floors. Above these rooms were comfortable 
chambers; and above the chambers the 
garret. 

A more loving pen than mine has drawn 
the old garrets of the Flatbush farmhouses, 
with their cast-off furniture, old trunks, and 
bandboxes; the unused cradle and crib; 
the little end window with its spider-webs and 
yellow wasps buzzing angrily, and beating 
with extended wings against the dingy panes, 
or sitting in dull clusters, motionless and 
silent, along the moulding ; the rough chim- 
neys; the spinning-wheels and looms, the 
wooden pegs with discarded clothing. Mrs. 
Vanderbilt says: — 

*' The shingled roof which overarched the garret 
in all its length and breadth was discolored by 
time, and streaked and stained with the leakage 
119 



COLONIAL DAYS 

caused by hard northeast storms ; there were tin- 
pans and sea-shells apparently placed at random 
over the floor in a purposeless way, but which 
were intended to catch the drip when the warped 
shingles admitted the rain. In winter there were 
little drifts of snow here and there which had 
sifted through the nail-holes and cracks." 

The garret was a famous drying-place in 
winter-time for the vast washings. Often long 
adjustable poles were fitted from rafter to 
rafter to hold the hanging garments. 

In the garret, beside the chimney and 
opening into it, was the smokehouse, some- 
times shaped like a cask. Too heavy and 
big to have been brought in and up to the 
garret, it was probably built in it. Around 
this smokehouse were hung hams and 
sausages, and sides of bacon and dried beef. 
These usually were not cured in this garret 
smokehouse; that was simply a storage- 
place, in which they could be kept properly 
dry and a little smoked. 

Of the karneVy or parlor, of New Amsterdam 
Irving wrote, with but slight exaggeration 
of its sanctity and cherished condition : — 

" The grand parlor was the sa7ictinn sanctorum, 
where the passion for cleaning was indulged with- 

120 



IN OLD NEW YORK 

out control. In this sacred apartment no one 
was permitted to enter excepting the mistress and 
her confidential maid, who visited it once a week, 
for the purpose of giving it a thorough cleaning — 
always taking the precaution of leaving their shoes 
at the door, and entering devoutly on their stock- 
ing-feet. After scrubbing the floor, sprinkling it 
with fine white sand, which was curiously stroked 
into angles, and curves, and rhomboids, with a 
broom — after washing the windows, rubbing and 
polishing the furniture, and putting a new bunch 
of evergreens in the fireplace — the window 
shutters were again closed to keep out the flies, and 
the room carefully locked up till the revolution of 
time brought round the weekly cleaning-day." 

Mrs. Grant fully confirms and emphasizes 
this account as applicable to the parlors of 
country-houses as well. 

The kitchen was usually in a long rambling 
ell at one gable-end of the house, rarely in an 
ell at right angles to the main house; in it 
centred the picturesqueness of the farm- 
house. It was a delightful apartment, bustling 
with activity, cheerful of aspect. On one side 
always stood a dresser. 

" Every room was bright 
With glimpses of reflected hght 

From plates that on the dresser shone." 



COLONIAL DAYS 

The shining pewter plates, polished like 
silver, were part of every thrifty housewife's 
store ; a garnish of pewter, which was a set 
of different-sized plates, was often her wedding- 
gift. Their use lingered till this century, and 
many pieces now are cherished heirlooms. 

Methods of cooking and cooking utensils 
varied much from those of the present day. 
The great brick oven was built beside the 
fireplace; sometimes it projected beyond the 
exterior of the building. It had a smoke- 
uptake in the upper part, from which a flue 
connected with the fireplace chimney. It 
was heated by being filled with burning dry- 
wood called oven-wood. When the wood 
was entirely consumed, the ashes were swept 
out with an oven-broom called a boeiider. 
A Dutch oven, or Dutch kitchen, was an 
entirely different affair. This was made of 
metal, usually tin, cylindrical in form, and 
open on one side, which was placed next the 
fire. Through this ran a spit by which meat 
could be turned when roasting. A bake- 
kettle, or bake-pan, was a metal pan which 
stood up on stumpy legs and was fitted with 
a tightly fitting, slightly convex cover on 
which hot coals were placed. Within this 

122 



IN OLD NEW YORK 

bake-pan hot biscuit or a single loaf of 
bread or cake could be baked to perfection. 

Across the chimney was a back-bar, some- 
times of green wood, preferably of iron ; on 
it hung pot-hooks and trammels, which under 
the various titles of pot-hangers, pot-claws, 
pot-clips, pot-brakes, and crooks, appear in 
every home-inventory. On those pot-hooks 
of various lengths, pots and kettles could be 
hung at varying heights above the fire. 
Often a large plate of iron, called the fire- 
plate, or fire-back, was set at the back-base of 
the kitchen chimney, where raged so constant 
and so fierce a fire that brick and mortar 
crumbled before it. These fire-backs were 
often cast in a handsome design, sometimes a 
Scriptural subject. These chimneys were 
vast in size ; Kalm said you could drive a 
horse and cart through them. Irving says 
they were *' of patriarchal magnitude, where 
the whole family enjoyed a community of 
privileges and had each a right to a corner." 
Often they were built without jambs. 
Madam Knights wrote in 1704 of New York 
townhouses : — 

" The fireplaces have no jambs (as ours have) , 
but the backs run flush with the walls, and the 
123 



COLONIAL DAYS 

hearth is of tiles and is as far out into the room at 
the ends as before the fire, which is generally five 
foot in the lower rooms, and the piece over where 
the mantle-tree should be is made as ours with 
joiners' work and as I suppose is fastened to iron 
rods inside." 

The kitchen fireplace was high as well as 
wide, and disclosed a vast smoky throat. 
When the week's cooking was ended and the 
Sabbath was approaching, this great fire- 
place was dressed up, put on its best clothes 
for Sunday, as did all the rest of the family ; 
across the top was hung a short petticoat, or 
valance, or little curtain gathered full on a 
string. This was called a schouwe-kleedty a 
schoorsteen valletje, or sometimes a dobbelstee- 
tiens valletje, this latter in allusion to the stuff 
of which the valance was usually made, — a 
strong close homespun linen checked off with 
blue or red. This clean, sweet linen frill was 
placed, freshly washed and ironed, every Sat- 
urday afternoon on the faithful, work-worn 
chimney while it took its Sunday rest. In 
some houses there hung throughout the week 
a schoorsteen valletje ; in others it was only 
Sunday gear. This was a fashion from early 
colonial days for both town and country. In 
124 



IN OLD NEW YORK 

the house of Mayor Rombouts in 1690 were 
fine chimney-cloths trimmed with fringe and 
lace, and worth half a pound each, and 
humbler checked chimney-cloths. Cornelius 
Steenwyck a few years earlier had in his 
"great chamber" a still gayer valletje of 
flowered tabby to match the tabby window- 
curtains. Peter Marius had calico valances 
for his chimneys. 

A description given by a Scotchwoman of 
fireplaces in Holland at about this date shows 
very plainly from whence this form of hearth- 
dressing and chimney were derived : — 

" The chimney-places are very droll-like ; they 
have no jams nor lintell, as we have, but a flat 
grate^ and there projects over it a lum in a form of 
the cat-and-clay lum, and commonly a muslin or 
ruffled pawn around it." 

When tiles were used for facing the fire- 
place and even for hearths, as they often 
were in the kamery or parlor, they were usu- 
ally of Delft manufacture, printed in dull blue 
with coarsely executed outline drawings of 
Scriptural scenes. In the Van Cortlandt 
manor-house, the tiles were pure white. I 
have some of the tiles taken from the old 
125 



COLONIAL DAYS 

Schermerhorn house in Brooklyn, built in the 
middle of the seventeenth century and demol- 
ished in 1895. There were nearly two hun- 
dred in each fireplace in the house. The 
scenes were from the Old Testament, and 
several, if I interpret their significance aright, 
from the Apocrypha. The figures are dis- 
creetly attired in Dutch costumes. Irving 
says of these Scripture-tiles: " Tobit and his 
dog figured to great advantage; Haman 
swung conspicuously on his gibbet; Jonah 
appeared most manfully bursting out of the 
whale, like Harlequin through a barrel of 
fire." To these let me add the very amusing 
one of Lazarus leaving his tomb, triumphantly 
waving the flag of the Netherlands. 

Sometimes the space between the open 
fireplace and the ceiling of the karner was 
panelled, and it had a narrow ledge of a man- 
telpiece upon which usually were placed a 
pair of silver, brass, or pewter candlesticks 
and a snuffers with tray. Occasionally a 
blekkeVy or hanging candlestick, hung over the 
mantel. In some handsome houses the sur- 
base was of tiles and also the staircase ; but 
such luxuries were unusual. 

Domestic comfort and kindly charity sat 
126 



IN OLD NEW YORK 

enthroned in every room of these Dutch 
homes. Daniel Denton wrote of them as 
early as 1670 : — 

"Though their low-roofed houses may seem to 
shut their doors against pride and luxury, yet how 
do they stand wide open to let charity in and out, 
either to assist each other, or relieve a stranger." 

In these neighborly homes thrift and sim- 
ple plenty and sober satisfaction in life had 
full sway; and these true and honorable 
modes of living lingered long, even to our 
own day. On the outskirts of a great city, 
within a few miles of the centre of our great- 
est city, still stand some of the farmhouses of 
Flatbush, whose story has been told con amove 
by one to the manner born. These old 
homesteads form an object-lesson which we 
may heed with profit to-day, of the dignity, 
the happiness, the beauty that comes from 
simplicity in every-day life. 



127 



COLONIAL DAYS 



CHAPTER VII 

THE DUTCH LARDER 

There is no doubt that the Dutch colo- 
nists were very valiant trenchermen ; more 
avid, perhaps, of quantity and frequency in 
their food than exacting of variety. Cardinal 
Bentivoglio (the diplomatist and historian) 
writing at the time of the first emigration to 
New Netherland, says that the greatest pleas- 
ures of the Hollanders were those of the 
table. This love of eating made them provi- 
dent and lavish of food-stores in emigration ; 
and the accounts of scant supplies, poor fare, 
and dire starvation which are recorded of 
other colonies, never have been told of the 
vol-gevoedt Dutch. Then, too, they landed 
on a generous shore, — no rock-bound coast, 
— Hendrick Hudson said the finest soil for 
cultivation that he ever set foot on. The 
welcoming fields richly nourished and multi- 
128 



IN OLD NEW YORK 

plied the Hollanders' store of seeds and roots 

and grafts. The rye quickly grew so tall that 

a man could bind the ears together above 

his head. Van der Donck saw a field of 

barley in New Netherland in which the barley 

stems were seven feet high. Domine Mega- 

polensis stated that a Rensselaerwyck schepm 

raised fine crops of wheat on the same field 

eleven years in succession. Two ripe crops 

of peas or of buckwheat could be raised on 

the same land in one season. The soil seemed 

inexhaustible; and fields and woods also 

offered to the settlers a rich native larder. 

Among these American food supplies came 

first and ever the native Indian corn, or 

" Turkie-wheat." The Dutch (fond of all 

cereal foods) took to their liking and their 

kitchens with speed the various forms of 

corn-food. 

Samp and samp porridge were soon their 
favorite dishes. Samp is Indian corn pounded 
to a coarsely ground powder in a mortar. 
Like nearly all the foods made of the various 
forms of Indian corn, its name is of Indian 
derivation, and usually its method of prepa- 
ration and cooking. Roger Williams wrote 
of it: — 

9 129 



COLONIAL DAYS 

" Nawsamp is a kind of meal pottage unparched. 
From this the EngHsh call their samp ; which is 
the Indian corn beaten and boiled." 

Samp porridge was a derivative of Indian 
and Dutch parentage. It was samp cooked 
in Dutch fashion, like a Jmtcspot, or hodgepot, 
with salt beef or pork and potatoes and other 
roots, such as carrots and turnips. These 
were boiled together in a vast kettle, usually 
in large quantity, as the porridge was better 
liked after several days' cooking. A week's 
supply for a family was often cooked at one 
time. After much boiling a strong crust was 
formed next the pot, and sometimes toward 
the end of the boiling the porridge was 
lifted out of the pot bodily — so to speak 
— by the crust and served crust and all. 
Samp was pounded in a primitive and pic- 
turesque Indian mortar made of a hollowed 
block of wood, or the stump of a tree. The 
pestle was a heavy block of wood shaped 
like the interior of the mortar and fitted with 
a handle attached to one side. This block 
was fastened to the top of a growing sapling 
which gave it the required spring back after 
being pounded down on the corn. Pounding 

samp was slow work, often done in later years 
130 



IN OLD NEW YORK 

by unskilled negroes and hence disparagingly 
termed '* niggering " corn. After those sim- 
ple mortars were abandoned elsewhere they 
were used on Long Island ; and it was jest- 
ingly told that skippers in a fog could always 
get their bearings off the Long Island coast 
because they could hear the pounding of the 
samp-mortars. 

Suppawn, another favorite of the settlers 
in New York, was an Indian dish made from 
Indian corn; it was a thick corn-meal and 
milk porridge. It soon was seen on every 
Dutch table, and is spoken of by all travel- 
lers in early New York. 

From the gossiping pages of the Labadist 
preachers we find hints of good fare in Brook- 
lyn in 1679: — 

" Then was thrown upon the fire, to be roasted, a 
pail full of Gowanes oysters which are the best in 
the country. They are fully as good as those of 
England, beiter than those we eat at Falmouth. I 
had to try some of them raw. They are large and 
full, some of them not less than a foot long. Others 
are young and small. In consequence of the great 
quantities of them everybody keeps the shells for 
the burning of lime. They pickle the oysters in 
small casks and send them to Barbados. We had 
for supper a roasted haunch of venison which he 
131 



COLONIAL DAYS 

had bought of the Indians for three guilders and a 
half of sea-want, that is fifteen stivers of Dutch 
money (fifteen cents), and which weighed thirty 
pounds. The meat was exceedingly tender and 
good and also quite fat. It had a slight aromatic 
flavor. We were also served with wild turkey, 
which was also fat and of a good flavor, and a wild 
goose, but that was rather dry. We saw here 
lying in a heap a whole hill of watermelons which 
were as large as pumpkins." 

De Vries tells of an abundant supply of 
game in the colony ; deer (as fat as any 
Holland deer can be) ; great wild turkeys, 
beautiful birds of golden bronze (one that 
he shot weighed thirty pounds) ; partridges 
and pigeons (in such great flocks that the 
sky was darkened). Domine Megapolensis 
says the plentiful wild turkeys and deer 
came to the hogpens of the Albany colo- 
nists to feed ; fat Dutch swine and graceful 
red deer must have seemed strange trough 
companions. A stag was sold readily by an 
Indian for a jack-knife. In 1695 Rev. Mr. 
Miller said a quarter of venison could be 
bought " at your door " for ninepence. Wild 
swan came in plenty, *' so that the bays and 
shores where they resort appear as if they 
132 



IN OLD NEW YORK 

were dressed in white drapery." Down the 
river swam hundreds of gray and white- 
headed geese nearly as stately as the swan ; 
Van der Donck knew a gunner (and gives his 
name, Henry de Backer) who killed eleven 
gray geese with one shot from his gun. Gray 
ducks and peHcans were plentiful and cheap. 
Gone forever from the waters of New York 
are the beautiful gray ducks, white sv/an, 
gray geese, and pelican ; anent these can we 
sigh for the good old times. The Earl of 
Strafford's letters and despatches, telling of 
the ** Commodities of the Island called 
Maniti ore Long He wch is in the Conti- 
nent of Virgenea," confirms all these 
reports and even tells of " fayre Turkees 
far greater than here, five hundred in a 
flocke," — which must have proved a noble 
sight. 

The river was full of fish, and the bay; 
their plenty inspired the first poet of New 
Netherland to rhyming enumeration ; among 
them were sturgeon — despised of Christians ; 
and terrapin — not despised. ** Some per- 
sons," wrote Van der Donck in 1656, "pre- 
pare delicious dishes from the water terrapin, 
which is luscious food." Two centuries and 
^3S 



COLONIAL DAYS 

a half of appreciation pay equally warm trib- 
ute to the terrapin's reputation. 

Patriarchal lobsters five and six feet long 
were in the bay. Van der Donck says '* those 
a foot long are better for serving at table." 
Truly a lobster six feet long would seem a 
little awkward to serve. VV. Eddis, in his 
"Letters from America" written in 1792, 
says these vast lobsters were caught in New 
York waters until Revolutionary days when 
''since the late incessant cannonading, they 
have entirely forsaken the coast; not one 
having been taken or seen since the com- 
mencement of hostiHties." Crabs, too, were 
large, and some were ** altogether soft." Van 
der Donck corroborates the foot-long oysters 
seen by the Labadists. He says the '* large 
oysters roasted or stewed make a good bite," 
— a very good bite, it would seem. 

Salted fish was as carefully prepared and 
amiably regarded in New York as in England 
and Holland at the same date. The ling 
and herring of the old country gave place in 
New York to shad. The greatest pains was 
taken in preparing, drying, and salting the 
plentiful shad. It is said that in towns, as in 
New York and Brooklyn, great heaps of shad 
134 



IN OLD NEW YORK 

were left when purchased at each door, and 
that the necessary cleaning and preparation 
was done on the street. As all housewives 
purchased shad and salted and packed at 
about the same time, those public scavengers, 
the domestic hogs, who roamed the town- 
streets unchecked (and ever welcomed), must 
have been specially useful at shad-time. 

At a very early date apple-trees were set 
out and cultivated with much care and much 
success. Nowhere else, says Bankers, had 
he seen such fine apples. He notes the 
Double Paradise. The Newtown pippin, the 
Kingston spitzenburgh, the Poughkeepsie 
swaar-apple, the red-streak, guelderleng, and 
others of well-known name, show New York's 
attention to apple-raising. Kalm, the Swed- 
ish naturalist, spoke of the splendid apple- 
orchards throughout New York in 1749, and 
told of the horse-press for making cider. 
Cider soon rivalled in domestic use the beer 
of the Fatherland. It was constantly used 
during the winter season, and, diluted with 
water, sweetened, and flavored with nutmeg, 
made a grateful summer drink. 

Peaches were in such lavish abundance as 
to become uncared for. The roads were 
135 



COLONIAL DAYS 

covered with fallen peaches which even the 
ever-filled hogs would not eat. Plums were 
equally plentiful. Cherry-trees were planted 
in good numbers and produced in great quan- 
tities. ** All travellers and passers-by could 
pick and eat at will," says Kalm. Compara- 
tively scanty and poor are peaches, plums, 
and cherries in New York State to-day. 

There were also plenty of vegetables: 
cibolleji (chibbals), peasen (pease), chicoreye 
(chiccory), karoten (carrots), artichock (ar- 
tichoke), lattouwe (lettuce), beeten (beets), 
pastmaken (parsnips), radys (radish), and 
many others. Pumpkins and squashes 
abounded, but do not appear to have been in 
as universal use as in New England. Quaa- 
siens were so easily cooked " they were a 
favorite with the young wom.en," says one 
authority; they ** grew rapidly and digested 
v/ell," also were qualities accorded in their 
favor. Under the name of askutasqitash, or 
vine-apples, Roger Williams sung their praises. 
Musk-melons, water-melons, and cucumbers 
were grown in large number and excellent 
quality. Whether they cooked the DuyveVs 
broodt, the picturesque Dutch name for mush- 
rooms, I know not, but the teeming woods of 
136 



IN OLD NEW YORK 

the Hudson valley offered them rich and 
abundant store of this dainty food. 

The Swedish naturalist, Kalm, visited Al- 
bany in 1749. He has left to us a very full 
account of Albany food and fashions of serv- 
ing at that time. He found the Albanians 
faring as did their great grandfathers in the 
Netherlands, who were sneeringly called 
** milk and cheese men," and he found them 
rasping their cheese as had their far-away 
forbears in Holland, and as do their descend- 
ants in Holland to this day. He writes 
thus : — 

*'The inhabitants of Albany are much more 
sparing than the English. The meat which is 
served up is often insufficient to satisfy the stom- 
ach, and the bowl does not circulate so freely as 
among the English. . . . Their meat and man- 
ner of dressing it is very different from that of 
the English. Their Breakfast is tea, commonly 
without milk. About thirty or forty years ago, tea 
was unknown to them, and they breakfasted either 
upon bread and butter or bread and milk. They 
never put sugar into the cup but put a small bit of it 
into their mouths while they drink. Along with the 
tea they eat bread and butter with slices of hung 
beef. Coffee is not usual here: they breakfast 
generally about seven. Their dinner is buttermilk 

137 



COLONIAL DAYS 

and bread to which they sometimes add sugar, and 
then it is a deHcious dish to them : or fresh milk 
and bread : or boiled or roasted flesh. They 
sometimes make use of buttermilk instead of fresh 
milk to boil a thin kind of porridge with, which 
tastes very sour but not disagreeable in hot weather. 
To each dinner they have a great salad prepared 
with abundance of vinegar and little or no oil. 
They frequently eat buttermilk, bread and salad, 
one mouthful after another. Their supper is gen- 
erally bread and butter, or milk and bread. They 
sometimes eat cheese at breakfast and at dinner : 
it is not in sHces but scraped or rasped so as to 
resemble coarse flour, which they pretend adds to 
the good taste of cheese. They commonly drink 
very small beer or pure water." 

The " great salad dressed with vinegar " 
was doubtless " koolslaa," shredded cabbage, 
which we to-day call coleslaw. It was a uni- 
versal dish also at that time in Holland. A 
woman-traveller there in 1756 wrote: — 

*' Everything of vivers is dear in Holland ex- 
cept vegetables, upon which the commons live all 
summer, and the better sort a great deall. Every 
body, great and small, sups on sallad with oil and 
vinegar." 

The Dutch were famously fond of" bakers- 
meats," — all cakes and breads, — and ex- 
138 



IN OLD NEW YORK 

celled in making them, and made them in 
great variety. There was early legislation 
with regard to bakers, that they use just 
weights and good materials. In 1656 they 
were ordered to bake twice a week *' both 
coarse and white loaves, both for Christians 
and Indians," at these prices : Fourteen stuy- 
vers for a double coarse loaf of eight pounds, 
with smaller loaves at proportionate prices; 
and eight stuyvers for a white loaf of two 
pounds. Two years later the coarse wheat 
loaf of eight pounds was definitely priced at 
fourteen stuyvers in sea-want, ten in beavers, 
and seven in silver. The bakers complained, 
and a new assize of bread was established 
at a slightly higher rate. Under Dongan's 
charter bread-viewers were appointed; then 
the bread had to be marked with the baker's 
initials. I have puzzled over a prohibition of 
any bakers selling koeckjes, jumbles, and sweet 
cakes, unless he also had coarse bread for 
sale; and fancy it was that the extravagant 
and careless purchaser might not be tempted 
or forced to buy too costly food. One baker 
was prosecuted for having gingerbread In his 
window when he had no coarse bread. There 
were also *' pye-women " as well as bakers. 
139 



COLONIAL DAYS 

Favorite articles of food were three kinds 
of fried cakes of close kinship, thus described 
by Irving, — ** the doughty doughnut, the 
tender olykoek, the crisp and crumbling 
cruller." The doughnut was an equal favor- 
ite in New England, and was in some local- 
ities called a simball, or simblin ; which was a 
New England variant, a Puritan degradent of 
the simbling-cake, or simnel, of the English 
Mid-Lent Sunday. In New England country- 
houses doughnuts were eaten, indeed, are 
eaten, all the year around three meals a day; 
but Mrs. Vanderbilt says the Dutch in Flat- 
bush only made them from November 
through January, because at that period the 
lard in which they were cooked was still 
fresh. She also says they were limited in 
their public appearance to the tea-table or for 
children to eat ** between-meals." I don't 
know that I am willing to acquiesce in her 
assumption that when the Pilgrims were in 
Holland the English goodwives learned to 
make doughnuts from the Dutch vroiiwSy 
and thus be forced to yield doughnuts to 
the other triumphs of *' Dutch colonial 
influence." 

The famous olykoeks^ or olijkoecksy were 
140 



IN OLD NEW YORK 

thus concocted, as given by an old Dutch 
receipt of the year 1740 belonging to Mrs. 
Morris Patterson Ferris : — 

" About twelve o'clock set a little yeast to rise, 
so as to be ready at five p. m. to mix with the 
following ingredients : 3f pounds of flour, i pound 
of sugar, i pound of butter and lard mixed, i|- 
pints of milk, 6 eggs, i pint raised yeast. Warm 
the butter, sugar and milk together, grate a nut- 
meg in the flour, add eggs last. Place in a warm 
place to rise. If quite light at bedtime, work 
them down by pressing with the hand. At nine 
next morning make into small balls with the 
hand, and place in the centre of each a bit of 
raisin, citron, and apple chopped fine. Lay on 
a well-floured pie-board and allow them to rise 
again. They are frequently ready to boil at two 
o'clock. In removing them from the board use 
a knife, well-floured, and just give them a little 
roll with the hand to make them round. Have 
the fat boihng, and boil each one five minutes. 
When cool roll in sifted sugar." 

The name means literally oil-cakes, and 
they were originally boiled or fried in oil. 
They were called " melting," and I am sure 
from this description of the process of manu- 
facture they were delicate enough to deserve 
the appellation. The Hessian officers in 
141 



COLONIAL DAYS 

Revolutionary times give eloquent approval 
of these " rich batter-cakes." 

Tea-cakes which were made both in New 
England and New York were what Mrs. Van- 
derbilt calls ** izer-cookies." They were so 
termed from the Dutch word izeVy or yser, 
meaning iron ; for they were baked in long- 
handled irons called wafer-irons, which often 
had the initials of the owners impressed in 
the metal, which impression of course ren- 
dered the letters in relief on the cakes. 
Often a date was also stamped on the irons. 
These wafer-irons sometimes formed part of a 
wedding outfit, having the initials of the bride 
and groom intertwined. The cakes were also 
called split-cakes because, thin as they were, 
often they were split and buttered before be- 
ing eaten. Other wafer-cakes were called 
oblyen. Cinnamon-cakes resembled a deli- 
cate jumble with powdered cinnamon sprin- 
kled on top. Puffards, or piiffertjes, were 
eaten hot with powdered cinnamon and sugar, 
and were baked in a special pan, termed a 
puffet-pan. Wonders were flavored with 
orange peel and boiled in lard. Pork-cakes, 
made of chopped pork with spices, almonds, 
currants, raisins, and flavored with brandy, 
142 



IN OLD NEW YORK 

were a rich cake. The famous Schuyler 
wedding cake had among other ingredients, 
twelve dozen eggs, forty-eight pounds of 
raisins, twenty-four pounds of currants, four 
quarts of brandy, a quart of rum. This was 
mixed in a wash-tub. 

Many of these cakes are now obsolete. In 
one of the old inventories of the Van Cort- 
landt famJly, in a list of kitchen utensils is 
the item, '* I BoUy-byssha Pan." This is the 
Anglicized spelling of bollo-baciUy — bolle the 
old Dutch and Spanish word for a bun, or 
small loaf of flour and sugar; bacia the 
Spanish for a metal pan. In old receipts in 
the same family the word is called bolla- 
bouche and bolla-buysies. The receipt runs 
thus : — 

" To a pound of flower a quarter of a pound of 
sugar, the same of butter, 4 egs, sum Nut-Meg 
and Senamond, milk & yeast, A pint of milk to 
2 pound of flower." 

Domestic swine afforded the Dutch many 
varied and appetizing foods. Two purely 
Dutch dishes were rolliches and head cheese. 
Rolliches were made of lean beef and fat cut 
in pieces about as large as dice, then highly 

143 



COLONIAL DAYS 

seasoned with herbs and spices, sewed in tripe 
and boiled for several hours. This roll was 
then pressed into an oblong loaf, which made 
pretty slices when cut and served cold. Head 
cheese, or hoofd-kaas, was similar in appear- 
ance, but was made of pigs'-feet and portions 
of the head chopped fine, boiled in a bag, and 
pressed into the shape of a cheese. This also 
was served in cold slices. 

Speck ende kool^ pork and cabbage, was 
another domestic stand-by; fried pork and 
apples were made into an appetizing dinner 
dish. Roast ducks were served with pork- 
dumplings, — of which the mystery of manu- 
facture is unknown to me. 

A great favorite of the Dutch is shown 
through this advertisement in the ''New York 
Gazette" of December 17, 1750: — 

" The Printer hereof, ever mindful to please and 
gratify his Customers, finding but little Entertain- 
ment at present suitable to the Genius of many; 
has been obliged to provide for the Winter Evening 
Diversion of such of his Friends as are that way 
inclined, A Parcel of the Nuts commonly called 
KESKATOMAS NUTS which he sells at One 
Shillifig per Half a Peck. N. B. They are all 
right ' Sopus and of the right sort.' " 
144 



IN OLD NEW YORK 

A writer in the "Literary World " in 1850 
thus defines and eulogizes these nuts : — 

*' Hickory, shell-bark, kiskitomas nut ! 
Or whatsoever thou art called, thy praise 
Has ne'er been sounded yet in poet's lays." 

Michaux, in his " North American Sylva," 
says that many descendants of the Dutch in 
New Jersey and New York still call the 
hickory-nut Kisky-Thomas-niits. The name is 
derived from an Indian word, not from the 
Dutch. These nuts were served at every 
winter evening company, great or small. 
Mrs. Grant tells of their appearance on the 
tea-table. 

Of the drinking habits of the Dutch colo- 
nists I can say that they v/ere those of all 
the colonies, — excessive. Tempered in their 
tastes somewhat by the universal brewing 
and drinking of beer, they did not use as 
much rum as the Puritans of New England, 
nor drink as deeply as the Virginia planters ; 
but the use of liquor was universal. A liba- 
tion was poured on every transaction, every 
action, at every happening in the community, 
in public life as well as in private. John 
Barleycorn was ever a witness at the drawing 
10 145 



COLONIAL DAYS 

up of a contract, the signing of a deed, the 
selling of a farm, the purchase of goods, 
the arbitration of a suit. If either party to a 
contract ** backed out" before signing, he 
did not back away from the " treat," but had 
to furnish half a barrel of beer or a gallon of 
rum to assuage the pangs of disappointment. 
Liquor was served at auctions or '* vendues " 
free, so Madam Knight says, — buyers be- 
coming expansive in bidding when well 
primed. It appeared at weddings, funer- 
als, church-openings, deacon-ordainings, and 
house-raisings. No farm hand in haying- 
field, no sailor on a vessel, no workman in a 
mill, no cobbler, tailor, carpenter, mason, or 
tinker would work without some strong drink, 
some treat. The bill for liquor where many 
workmen were employed, as in a house-rais- 
ing, was often a heavy one. 

A detailed example of the imperative fur- 
nishing of liquor to workmen is found in the 
contracts and bills for building in 1656 the 
first stone house erected at Albany, a govern- 
ment house or fort. It cost 12,213 guilders 
in wampum, or about $3,500, and was built 
under the charge of Jan de la Montague, the 
Vice-Director of the Fort. Every step in the 
146 



IN OLD NEW YORK 

erection of this building was taken knee-deep 
in liquor. The dispensing of drink began 
when the old wooden fort was levelled ; a tun 
of strong beer was furnished to the pullers- 
down. At the laying of the first stones of 
the wall a case of brandy, an anker (thirty- 
three quarts) of brandy, and thirty-two guil- 
ders' worth of other liquor wet the thirsty 
whistles of the masons. When the cellar 
beams were laid, the carpenters had their 
turn. Two barrels of strong beer, three cases 
of brandy, and seventy-two florins* worth of 
small beer rested them temporarily from their 
labors. When the second tier of beams was 
successfully in place, the carpenters had two 
more cases of brandy and a barrel of beer. 

The beams had already received a previous 
** wetting; " for when brought to the building 
they had been left without the wall, and had 
been carried within, one at a time, by eight 
men who had half a barrel of beer for each 
beam. There were thirty-three beams in all. 

All the wood-carriers, teamsters, carpenters, 
stone-cutters, and masons had, besides these 
special treats, a daily dram of a gill of brandy 
apiece, and three pints of beer at dinner. 
They were dissatisfied, and ''solicited" another 
147 



COLONIAL DAYS 

pint of beer. Even the carters who brought 
wood and the boatmen who floated down 
spars were served with liquor. When the 
carpenters placed the roof-tree, a half-barrel 
of liquor was given them. Another half-bar- 
rel under the name of tiles-beer went to the 
tile-setters. The special completion of the 
winding staircase demanded five guilders' 
worth of liquor. When the house was fin- 
ished, a kraeg, or housewarming, of both food 
and drink to all the workmen and their wives 
was demanded and refused. Well it might 
be refused, when the hquor bill without it 
amounted to seven hundred and sixteen 
guilders. 

The amount of liquor required to help in 
conducting an election was very great. In 
1738 James Alexander and Eventhus Van 
Home paid over seventy-two pounds for one 
election bill. Liquor then was cheap. This 
sum purchased sixty-two gallons of Jamaica 
rum, several gallons of brandy, eight gallons 
of lime-juice, a " pyd " of wine which cost six- 
teen pounds (I don't know what a "pyd" 
could have been) , a large amount of shrub, and 
mugs and *' gugs" and '* bottels." There were 
also two bagpipes and a fiddler. 
148 



IN OLD NEW YORK 

Let me give, as a feeble excuse for the 
large consumption of beer, cider, etc., that 
the water was poor in many of the towns. 
Kalm wrote of the Albany water: — 

" The water of several of the wells was very cool 
about this time, but had a kind of acid taste which 
was not very agreeable. I think this water is not 
very wholesome for people who are not used to it. 
Nearly every house in Albany has its well, the water 
of which is applied to common use ; but for tea, 
brewing, and washing they commonly take the water 
of the river." 

What can be the other " common use " to 
which well-water was applied, except putting 
out fires, — which is an infrequent use? 

In New York City the water was equally 
poor. The famous Tea-water Pump supplied 
in barrels for many years the more fastidious 
portion of the community. Perhaps we could 
scarcely expect them to drink much water 
when they had to buy it. 

Our notions of life in New Netherland 
have been so thoroughly shaped by Die- 
drich Knickerbocker's tergiversating account 
thereof, that it would be difficult for us to 
make any marked change in the picture he 
has painted. Nor do we need to do so. For 
149 



COLONIAL DAYS 

though the details of public and official life 
and characters in that day have been wilfully 
distorted by Irving's keen humor, still the 
atmosphere of his picture is undeniably cor- 
rect, and the domestic life he has shown us 
was the life of that colony. I find nothing, 
after much illumination through careful exami- 
nation of old records and the contemporary 
accounts given by early travellers, to change 
in any considerable degree the estimate of 
every-day life in New Netherland which I 
gained from Irving, save in one respect, — the 
account of Dutch table manners, and the at- 
tributing to the Dutch burghers of lax hospi- 
tality at dinner-time, which I cannot believe. 
Madam Knight wrote of her New York hosts 
in 1704: — 

"They are sociable to one another, and Cur- 
teos and Civill to Strangers, and fare well in their 
houses. . . . They are sociable to a degree, their 
tables being as free to their Naybours as them- 
selves." 

Mrs. Grant, writing of Albanians half a cen- 
tury later, gives a detailed description of their 
manners as hosts, which might serve as an 
explanation of apparent inhospitality in the 
time of Walter the Doubter : — 
150 



IN OLD NEW YORK 

" They were exceedingly social, and visited each 
other very frequently, beside the regular assembling 
together in porches every fine evening. Of the 
more substantial luxuries of the table they knew 
little, and of the formal and ceremonious parts of 
good breeding still less. 

" If you went to spend a day anywhere, you were 
received in a manner we should think very cold. No 
one rose to welcome you ; no one wondered you 
had not come sooner, or apologized for any de- 
ficiency in your entertainment. Dinner, which was 
very early, was served exactly in the same manner 
as if there were only the family. The house, in- 
deed, was so exquisitely neat and well regulated, 
that you could not surprise them ; and they saw 
each other so often and so easily that intimates 
made no difference. Of strangers they were shy ; 
not by any means from want of hospitality, but 
from a consciousness that people who had little 
to value themselves on but their knowledge of the 
modes and ceremonies of polished life disliked 
their sincerity and despised their simplicity. If 
you showed no insolent wonder, but easily and 
quietly adopted their manners, you would receive 
from them not only very great civility, but much 
essential kindness. . . . After sharing this plain 
and unceremonious dinner, which might, by the 
bye, chance to be a very good one, but was in- 
variably that which was meant for the family, tea 
was served in at a very early hour. And here it 

151 



COLONIAL DAYS 

was that the distinction shown to strangers com- 
menced. Tea here was a perfect 'regale,' accom- 
panied by various sorts of cake unknown to us, 
cold pastry, and great quantities of sweetmeats and 
preserved fruits of various kinds, and plates of hick- 
ory and other nuts ready cracked. In all manner 
of confectionery and pastry these people excelled ; 
and having fruit in great abundance, which cost 
them nothing, and getting sugar home at an easy 
rate, in return for their exports to the West Indies, 
the quantity of these articles used in families, other- 
wise plain and frugal, was astonishing. Tea was 
never unaccompanied with some of these petty 
articles; but for strangers a great display was 
made. If you stayed supper, you were sure of a 
most substantial though plain one. In this meal 
they departed, out of compliment to the strangers, 
from their usual simplicity. Having dined between 
twelve and one, you were quite prepared for it. 
You had either game or poultry roasted, and al- 
ways shell-fish in the season ; you had also fruit in 
abundance. All this with much neatness, but no 
form. The seeming coldness with which you were 
first received wore off by degrees." 

It may be noted that Mrs. Grant gives a 
very different notion of Albany fare than does 
Kalm, already quoted ; and she wrote scarce 
a score of years after his account. She tells 
— in this extract — not of wealthy folk, 
152 



IN OLD NEW YORK 

though they were truly gentle-folk, if sim- 
plicity of living, kindliness, and good sense 
added in many cases to good birth could 
make these plain Albanians gentle-folk. And 
in truth it seems to me a cheerful picture, — 
one of true though shy hospitality; pleasant 
of contemplation in our days of formality and 
extravagance of entertaining, of scant knowl- 
edge of the true home life even of those we 
call our friends. 



153 



COLONIAL DAYS 



CHAPTER VIII 

THE DUTCH VROUWS 

There is much evidence to show that the 
women of Dutch descent of the early years 
of New Netherland and New York had other 
traits than those of domestic housewifery; 
they partook frequently of the shrewdness 
and business sagacity and capacity of their 
Dutch husbands. Widows felt no hesitation 
and experienced no difficulty in carrying on 
the business affairs of their dead partners; 
wives having capable, active husbands boldly 
engaged in independent business operations 
of their own ; their ventures were as extended 
and fearless as those of the men. They 
traded for peltries with the Indians with 
marked success. I suspect part of the profit 
may have come through the Indian braves' 
serene confidence in their own superior 
sagacity in bargaining and trafficking with 
the "white squaws." The Labadist travel- 
154 



IN OLD NEW YORK 

lers wrote thus despitefully of a "female- 
trader" in Albany in 1679: — 

'' This woman, although not of openly godless 
life, is more wise than devout, although her knowl- 
edge is not very extensive, and does not surpass 
that of the women of New Netherland. She is a 
truly worldly woman, proud and conceited, and 
sharp in trading with wild people as well as tame 
ones, or what shall I call them not to give them the 
name of Christians, or if I do, it is only to distin- 
guish them from the others. She has a husband, 
who is her second one. He remains at home 
quietly while she travels over the country to carry 
on the trading. In fine, she is one of the Dutch 
female-traders who understand the business so well. 
If these be the persons who are to make Christians 
of the heathen, what will the latter be? " 

Certain traits of a still more influential 
and widely known female-trader in New 
Netherland are shown to us in Bankers' 
pages through slight but extremely vivid 
side-lights, but which (having been written 
on shipboard) may perhaps be taken with 
the grain of palliative salt which should fre- 
quently be cast upon the condemnatory utter- 
ances of sea-weary, if not sea-sick, passen- 
gers on the raging deep when they regard 
everything connected with the odious ship 
15s 



COLONIAL DAYS 

which confines them. We are introduced to 
this colonial woman of affairs in the sub-title 
of the journal, which states that the journey- 
to New Netherland was made "in a small 
Flute-ship called the Charles, of Vv^hich 
Thomas Singleton was Master; but the 
superior Authority over both Ship and Cargo 
was in Margaret Filipse, who was the Owner 
of both, and with whom we agreed for our 
Passage from Amsterdam to New York, in 
New Netherland, at seventy-five Guilders for 
each Person, payable in Holland." 

This " Margaret Filipse " was the daughter 
of Adolph Hardenbrook who settled in Ber- 
gen, opposite New Amsterdam. She was 
the widow of the merchant trader Peter 
Rudolphus De Vries when she married 
Frederick Philipse. Her second husband 
was a carpenter by trade, who worked for 
Governor Stuyvesant; but on his marriage 
with the wealthy Widow De Vries, he be- 
came her capable business partner, and finally 
was counted the richest man in the colony. 
She owned ships running to many ports, and 
went repeatedly to Holland in her own ships 
as supercargo. She was visited by Bankers 
in Amsterdam in June, 1679. According 
156 



IN OLD NEW YORK 

to the custom of his religious sect, he al- 
ways called her by her Christian name, and 
wrote of her as Margaret. He says : — 

" We spoke to Margaret, inquiring of her when 
the ship would leave. She answered she had given 
orders to have everything in readiness to sail to-day, 
but she herself was of opinion it would not be 
before Monday. We offered her the money to 
pay for our passage, but she refused to receive it 
at that time, saying she was tired and could not be 
troubled with it that day." 

They waited patiently on shipboard for 
several days for Madam Philipse to embark, 
and at last he writes : — • 

" We were all very anxious for Margaret to 
arrive, so that we might not miss a good wind. 
Jan and some of the otlier passengers were much 
dissatisfied. Jan declared, * If this wind blows over 
I will write her a letter that will make her ears 
tingle.'" 

Landing at an English port, the travellers 
bought wine and vinegar, "for we began to 
see it would go slim with us on the voyage,'* 
and Margaret bought a ship which was made 
ready to go to the Isle of May and then to 
the Barbadoes. Over the purchase and 
equipment of this ship arose a great quarrel, 
157 



COLONIAL DAYS 

for ''those miserable, covetous people Mar- 
garet and her husband " tried to take away 
the Charles' long-boat because timber for a 
new one was cheaper in New York than in 
Falmouth, England. Naturally, the passen- 
gers objected to crossing the Atlantic without 
a ship's-boat. Bankers complained further 
of Margaret's "miserable covetousness," — 
that she made the ship lay to for an hour and 
a half and sent out the jolly-boat to pick up 
a ship's mop or swab worth six cents; and 
the carpenter swore because she had not fur- 
nished new leather and spouts for the 
pumps. Bankers explained at length the 
enhancement of the Philipse profits through 
some business arrangement and preferment 
with the Governor, by which Frederick 
Philipse became the largest trader with the 
Five Nations at Albany, had a profitable 
slave-trade with Africa, and, it is asserted, 
was in close bonds with the Madagascar 
pirates. Whether " Margaret " favored this 
trade with the pirates is not known; but it 
could probably be said of her trade, as of 
many others in the colony, that it was hard 
to draw the dividing line between privateer- 
ing and piracy. 

158 



IN OLD NEW YORK 

Her calling was not singular in New 
Amsterdam. The little town abounded in 
women-traders. 

Elizabeth Van Es was the daughter of one 
of the early Albany magistrates. She mar- 
ried Gerrit Bancker, and on becoming a 
widow removed to New York, where she 
promptly opened a store on her own account, 
and conducted it with success till her death, 
in 1694. In the inventory of her effects were 
a share in a brigantine, a large quantity of 
goods and peltries, as well as various silver- 
clasped Bibles, gold and stone rings, and 
silver tankards and beakers, showing her 
success in her business career. The wife of 
the great Jacob Leisler, a Widow Vander- 
veen when he married her, was a trader. 
Lysbet, the widow of Merchant Reinier, be- 
came the wife of Domine Drisius, of New 
York. She carried on for many years a 
thriving trade on what is now Pearl Street, 
near Whitehall Street, and was known to 
every one as Mother Drisius. The wife of 
Domine Van Varick also kept a small store, 
and thus helped out her husband's salary. 

Heilke Pieterse was the wife of the fore- 
most blacksmith of New Amsterdam ; and as 
159 



COLONIAL DAYS 

he monopolized the whole business of Long 
Island, he died very rich, — worth at least 
ten thousand dollars. Not overwhelmed or 
puffed up with the inheritance of such opu- 
lence, Heilke carried on her husband's busi- 
ness for many years with success. 

Margaret Backer was another successful 
business woman. For years she acted as 
attorney for her husband while he was in 
foreign countries attending to that end of his 
great foreign trade. Rachel Vinje, involved 
in heavy lawsuits over the settlement of an 
estate, pleaded her own case in court, and 
was successful. Women were constant in 
their appearance in court as parties in con- 
tracts and agreements. 

The Schuyler family did not lack ex- 
amples of stirring women-kind. Margaret 
van Schlictenhorst, wife of the first Peter 
Schuyler, being left a widow, managed her 
husband's estate in varied business lines with 
such thrift and prudence that in her will, 
made at eighty years of age, she could assert 
that the property had vastly increased. She 
was not out of public affairs, for during the 
Leisler troubles she was the second largest 
subscriber to the fund in support of the gov- 
i6o 



IN OLD NEW YORK 

ernment ; and she also lent money to pay the 
borrowed soldiers. Her niece, Heligonda 
van Schlictenhorst, a shrewd spinster, was 
a merchant, and furnished public supplies. 
The daughter of Peter Schuyler married 
John Collins. A letter of his, dated 1722, 
shows her capacity. I quote a clause from 
it: — 

^' Since you left us my wife has been in the 
Indian country, and Van Slyck had purchased 
what he could at the upper end of the land ; she 
purchased the rest from Ignosedah to his purchase. 
She has gone through a great deal of hardship and 
trouble about it, being from home almost ever 
since you left us ; and prevailed with the Indians 
whilst there with trouble and expense to mark out 
the land where the mine is into the woods. Mrs. 
Feathers has been slaving with her all this while, 
and hard enough to do with that perverse genera- 
tion, to bring them to terms." 

The picture of these two women in the 
wilds, treating and bargaining and trading 
with the savages, seems curious enough to 
us to-day. Women seem to have excelled in 
learning the Indian languages. The daugh- 
ter of Anneke Jans was the best interpreter 
in the colony, and served as interpreter to 
" 161 



COLONIAL DAYS 

Stuyvesant during his famous treaty with the 
Six Nations. 

Many of the leading taverns or hostelries 
were kept by women, — a natural calling, cer- 
tainly, for good housewives. Madam Van 
Borsum was mistress of the Ferry Tavern in 
Breucklen. Annetje Litschar kept the tavern 
which stood near the present site of Hanover 
Square. Metje Wessell's hostelry stood on 
the north side of Pearl Street, near White- 
hall Street. 

More successful still and bold in trade was 
Widow Maria Provoost. Scarce a ship came 
into port from Holland, England, the Med- 
iterranean, West Indies, or the Spanish Main, 
but brought to her large consignments of 
goods. Her Dutch business correspondence 
was a large one. She, too, married a second 
time, and, as Madam James Alexander, filled 
a most dignified position, and became the 
mother of Lord Stirling. 

In a letter written by her husband, James 
Alexander, to his brother William, and dated 
October 21, 1721, there is found a passage 
which gives extraordinary tribute to her 
business capacity and her powers of endurance 
alike. It reads thus : — 
162 



IN OLD NEW YORK 

"Two nights agoe at eleven o'clock, my wife 
was Brought to bed of a Daughter and is in as 
good health as can be Expected, and does more 
than can be Expected of any woman, for till 
within a few hours of her being brought to bed 
She was in her Shop, and ever Since has given the 
price of Goods to her prentice, who comes to her 
and asks it when Customers come in. The very 
next day after She was brought to bed she Sold 
goods to above thirty pounds value. And here 
the business matters of her Shop which is Gener- 
ally Esteemed the best in New York, she with a 
prentice of about i6 years of age perfectly well 
manages without the Least help from me, you may 
guess a Httle of her success." 

He closes his letter with a eulogy which 
can be cordially endorsed by every reader : 

" I must say my fortune in America is above my 
Expectation, and I think even my Deserts, and 
the greatest of my good fortune is in getting so 
Good a Wife as I have, who alone would make ae 
man easy and happy had he nothing else to de- 
pend on." 

Madam Alexander accumulated great 
wealth, and spent it handsomely. She was 
the only person in town, besides the Gov- 
ernor, who kept a coach. Her will is an 
interesting document, and shows a fine style 
163 



COLONIAL DAYS 

of housekeeping. The enumeration of great 
and lesser drawing-rooms, front and back par- 
lors, blue and gold leather room, green and 
gold leather room, tapestry room, chintz 
room, etc., show its pretension and extent. 
She lived on Broad Street, had a fine garden 
laid out in the Dutch taste, a house full of 
sei-vants, and spent her money freely as she 
made it thriftily. A very good portrait of 
her exists. It shows an interesting counte- 
nance, with fine features, a keen eye, and 
indicating robust health. She is not dressed 
with great elegance, wearing the costume of 
the day, — a commonplace frilled cap, folded 
kerchief, close sleeves, such as we are familiar 
with in portraits of English women of her 
time. 

Jane Colden, the daughter of Governor 
Cadwallader Colden, was of signal service, 
not in trade, but in science. A letter written 
by her father explains her interest and use- 
fulness : — 

" Botany is an amusement which may be made 
agreeable to the ladies who are often at a loss to 
fill up their time. Their natural curiosity and the 
pleasure they take in the beauty and variety of 
dress seem to fit them for it. 
164 



IN OLD NEW YORK 

" I have a daughter who has an inclination to 
reading, and a curiosity for Natural Philosophy or 
Natural History, and a sufficient curiosity for at- 
taining a competent knowledge. I took the pains 
to explain Linnaeus' system, and to put it into an 
EngHsh form for her use by freeing it from techni- 
cal terms, which was easily done, by using two or 
three words in the place of one. She is now 
grown very fond of the study, and has made such 
a progress in it as, I believe, would please you, if 
you saw her performance. Though she could not 
have been persuaded to learn the terms at first, 
she now understands to some degree Linnaeus* 
characters, — notwithstanding she does not under- 
stand Latin. She has already a pretty large vol- 
ume in writing of the description of plants. She 
has shewn a method of taking the impression of 
the leaves on paper with printers' ink, by a simple 
kind of rolling press which is of use in distinguish- 
ing the species. No description in words alone, 
can give so clear an idea, as when assisted with a 
picture. She has the impression of three hundred 
plants in the manner you '11 see by the samples. 
That you may have some conception of her per- 
formance, and her manner of describing, I propose 
to enclose some samples in her own writing, some 
of which I think are new genera." 

Peter Collinson said she was the first lady 
to study the Linnaean system, and deserved 
165 



COLONIAL DAYS 

to have her name celebrated; and John Ellis, 
writing of her to Linnaeus in 1758, asks that 
a genus be named, for her, Coldenella. She 
was also a correspondent of Dr. Whyte of 
Edinburgh, and many learned societies in 
Europe. Walter Rutherfurd enumerates her 
talents, and caps them with a glowing tribute 
to her cheese-making. 

We find the women of the times full of 
interest in public affairs and active in good 
works. In the later days of the province, we 
learn of the gifts to the army at Crown Point 
in 1755. In those days the generous far- 
mers of Queens County, Long Island, col- 
lected one thousand and fifteen sheep, and 
these were "cheerfully given." 

"While their husbands at Great Neck 
were employed in getting sheep, the good 
mothers in that neighborhood in a few hours 
collected nearly seventy good large cheeses, 
and sent them to New York to be forwarded 
with the sheep to the army." Kings County 
defrayed the expense of conveying these 
sheep and cheeses to the army ; and a letter 
of gratitude was promptly returned by the 
commander-in-chief, Sir William Johnson, 
who said, — 

166 



IN OLD NEW YORK 

"This generous humanity is unanimously and 
gratefully applauded here by all. We pray that 
your benevolence may be returned to you by the 
great Shepherd of the human kind a thousand fold. 
And may those amiable housewives to whose skill 
we owe the refreshing cheeses long continue to 
shine in their useful and endearing stations." 

Kings County and Suffolk also sent 
cheeses, and we learn also : — 

" The Women of County Suffolk ever good in 
such Occasions are knitting several large bags of 
stockings and mittens to be sent to the poorer sol- 
diers at Forts William Henry and Edward." 

In studying the history of the province, I 
am impressed with the debt New Yorkers of 
Dutch descent owe, not to their forefathers, 
but to their foremothers; the qonspicuous 
decorum of life of these women and their 
great purity of morals were equalled by their 
good sense and their wonderful capacity in 
both domestic and public affairs. They were 
as good patriots as they were good business 
women ; and though they were none of them 
what Carlyle calls " writing- women, " it was 
not from poverty of good sense or natural 
intelligence, but simply from the imper- 
167 



COLONIAL DAYS 

fection of their education through lack 
of good and plentiful schools, and also want 
of stimulus owing to absence of literary 
atmosphere. 

A very shrewd woman-observer, writing in 
the middle of the eighteenth century of the 
Dutch, gives what seems to me a very just 
estimate and good description of one of their 
traits. She says: "Though they have no 
vivacity, they are smarter, a great deal 
smarter, than the English, that is, more 
uptaking.^' Those who know the exact 
Scotch meaning of **uptaking," which is 
somewhat equivalent to Anthony Trollope's 
"observation and reception," will understand 
the closeness of the application of the term 
to the Dutch. 

The Dutch women especially were "up- 
taking;" adaptive of all comfort-bringing 
methods of housekeeping. This was noted 
by Guicciardini in Holland as early as 1563. 
They were far advanced in knowledge and 
execution of healthful household conditions, 
through their beautiful cleanliness. Irving 
says very truthfully of them: "In those 
good days of simplicity and sunshine a pas- 
sion for cleanliness was the leading principle 
168 



IN OLD NEW YORK 

in domestic economy, and the universal test 
of a good housewife." Kalm says: "They 
are almost over nice and cleanly in regard to 
the floor, which is frequently scoured twice 
a week." They found conditions of house- 
keeping entirely changed in America, but 
the passionate love of cleanliness fostered in 
the Fatherland clung long in their hearts. 
Their "OEconomy" and thrift were also 
beautiful. 

An advertisement in the "New York 
Gazette" of April i, 1751, shows that the 
thrift of the community lingered until Revo- 
lutionary times : — 

"Elizabeth Boyd gives notice that she will as 
usual graft Pieces in knit Jackets and Breeches 
not to be discern'd, also to graft and foot Stock- 
ings, and Gentlemens Gloves, mittens or Muffatees 
made out of old Stockings, or runs them in the 
Heels. She likewise makes Childrens Stockings 
out of Old Ones." 

Other dames taught more elegant accom- 
plishments : — 

" Martha Gazley, now in the city of New York, 
Makes and Teacheth the following curious Works, 
viz. : Artificial Fruit and Flowers and other Wax- 
Work, Nun's Work, Philligree and Pencil-work 
169 



COLONIAL DAYS 

upon Muslin, all sorts of Needlework, and Rais- 
ing of Paste, as also to Paint upon Glass, and 
Transparent for Sconces with other Works. If any 
young Gentlewomen, or others, are inclined to 
learn any or all of the above-mentioned curious 
Works, they may be carefully taught and instructed 
in the same by said Martha Gazley." 

Mrs. Van Cortlandt, in her delightful 
account of home-life in Westchester County, 
says of the industrious Dutch women and 
their accomplishments and occupations : — 

'* Knitting was an art much cultivated, the Dutch 
women excelling in the variety and intricacy of 
the stitches. A knitting sheath, which might be 
of silver or of a homely goose-quill, was an indis- 
pensable utensil, and beside it hung the ball-pin- 
cushion. Crewel-work and silk embroidery were 
fashionable, and surprisingly pretty effects were 
produced. Every little maiden had her sampler, 
which she began with the alphabet and numerals 
following them with a Scriptural text or verse of a 
metrical psalm. Then fancy was let loose on 
birds, beasts, and trees. Most of the old families 
possessed framed pieces of embroidery, the handi- 
work of female ancestors. Flounces and trim- 
mings for aprons worked with delicately tinted 
silks on muslin were common. I have several 
yards of fine muslin painted in the early days 
with full-blown thistles in the appropriate colors. 
170 



IN OLD NEW YORK 

Fringe looms were in use, and cotton and silk 
fringes were woven." 

Tape-looms were also found in many 
households; and the weaving of tapes and 
"none-so-prettys" was deemed very light 
and elegant work. 

Though to the Dutch is ascribed the 
invention of the thimble, I never think of the 
Dutch women as excelling in fine needlework ; 
and I note that the teachers of intricate and 
novel embroidery-stitches are always Eng- 
lishwomen ; but in turn the English good- 
wives must yield to the Dutch the palm of 
comfortable, attractive housewifery, as well 
as shrewd, untiring business capacity. 



.171 



COLONIAL DAYS 



CHAPTER IX 

THE COLONIAL WARDROBE 

The Dutch goodwife worked hard from 
early morn till sunset. She worked in re- 
stricted ways, she had few recreations and 
pleasures and altogether little variety in her 
life; but she possessed what doubtless proved 
to her in that day, as it would to any woman 
in this day, a source of just satisfaction, a 
soothing to the spirit, a staying of melan- 
choly, a moral support second only to the 
solace of religion, — namely, a large quantity 
of very good clothes, which were substantial, 
cheerful, and suitable, if not elegant. 

The Dutch never dressed " in a plaine 
babbit according to the maner of a poore 
wildernesse people," as the Connecticut col- 
onists wrote of themselves to Charles II. ; 
nor were they weary wanderers in a wilder- 
ness as were Connecticut folk. 
172 



IN OLD NEW YORK 

I have not found among the statutes of 
New Netherland any sumptuary laws such as 
were passed in Connecticut, Massachusetts, 
and Virginia, to restrain and attempt to pro- 
hibit luxury and extravagance in dress. Nor 
have I discovered in the court-records any 
evidences of magisterial reproof of finery; 
there is, on the contrary, much indirect 
proof of encouragement to ** dress orderly 
and well according to the fashion and the 
time." Of course the Dutch had no Puri- 
tanical dread of over-rich garments; and vv^e 
must also never forget New Netherland was 
not under the control of a government nor of 
a religious band, but of a trading-company. 

The ordinary dress of the fair dames and 
damsels of New Amsterdam has been vividly 
described by Diedrich Knickerbocker; and 
even with the additional light upon their 
wardrobe thrown by the lists contained in 
colonial inventories, I still think his descrip- 
tion of their every-day dress exceedingly 
good for one given by a man. He writes : 

'* Their hair, untortured by the abominations of 

art, was scrupulously pomatumed back from their 

foreheads with a candle, and covered with a little 

cap of quilted calico, which fitted exactly to their 

173 



COLONIAL DAYS 

heads. Their petticoats of hnsey-woolsey were 
striped with a variety of gorgeous dyes, though I 
must confess those gallant garments were rather 
short, scarce reaching below the knee ; but then they 
made up in the number, which generally equalled 
that of the gentlemen's small-clothes ; and what is 
still more praiseworthy, they were all of their own 
manufacture, — of which circumstance, as may well 
be supposed, they were not a little vain. 

''Those were the honest days, in which every 
woman stayed at home, read the Bible, and wore 
pockets, — ay, and that, too, of a goodly size, fash- 
ioned with patchwork into many curious devices, 
and ostentatiously worn on the outside. These, in 
fact, were convenient receptacles where all good 
housewives carefully stored away such things as 
they wished to have at hand; by which means 
they often came to be incredibly crammed. 

" Besides these notable pockets, they likewise 
wore scissors and pincushions suspended from their 
girdles by red ribbons, or, among the more opu- 
lent and showy classes, by a brass and even silver 
chains, indubitable tokens of thrifty housewives 
and industrious spinsters. I cannot say much in 
vindication of the shortness of the petticoats; it 
doubtless was introduced for the purpose of giving 
the stockings a chance to be seen, which were gen- 
erally of blue worsted, with magnificent red clocks ; 
or perhaps to display a well-turned ankle and a 
neat though serviceable foot, set off by a high- 

174 



IN OLD NEW YORK 

heeled leathern shoe, with a large and splendid 
silver buckle. 

^' There was a secret charm in those petticoats, 
which no doubt entered into the consideration of 
the prudent gallants. The wardrobe of a lady 
was in those days her only fortune ; and she who 
had a good stock of petticoats and stockings was 
as absolutely an heiress as is a Kamtschatka damsel 
with a store of bear- skins, or a Lapland belle with 
plenty of reindeer." 

A Boston lady, Madam Knights, visiting 
New York in 1704, wrote: — 

" The English go very fashionable in their dress. 
But the Dutch, especially the middling sort, differ 
from our women, in their habitt go loose, wear 
French muches wch are like a Capp and head- 
band in one, leaving their ears bare, which are 
sett out with Jewells of a large size and many in 
number ; and their fingers hoop't with rings, some 
with large stones in them of many Coullers, as 
were their pendants in their ears, which you should 
see very old women wear as well as Young." 

This really gives a very good picture of 
the vrouws; "loose in their habit," wearino- 
sacques and loose gowns, not laced in with 
pointed waists as were the English and 
Boston women; with the ornamental head- 
^75 



COLONIAL DAYS 

dress, and the gay display of stoned earrings 
and rings, which was also not the usual wear 
of New England women, who generally 
owned only a few funeral rings. 

In the inventories of personal estates con- 
tained in the Surrogate's Court we find details 
of the wardrobe; but as I have enumerated 
and defined all the different articles at some 
length in my book, " Costume of Colonial 
Times," I will not repeat the definitions 
here; but it should be remembered that in 
the enumeration of the articles of clothing, 
many stuffs and materials of simple names 
were often of exceedingly good and even rich 
quality. From those inventories we have 
proof that all Dutch women had plenty of 
clothes; while the wives of the burgomas- 
ters, the opulent merchants, and those in 
authority, had rich clothes. I have given 
in full in my book a list of the clothing of a 
wealthy New York dame. Madam De Lange ; 
but I wish to refer to it again as an example 
of a really beautiful wardrobe. In it were 
twelve petticoats of varying elegance, some 
worth two pounds fifteen shillings each, 
which would be more than fifty dollars to- 
day. They were of silk lined v/ith silk, 
176 



IN OLD NEW YORK 

striped stuff, scarlet cloth, and ash-gray cloth. 
Some were trimmed with gold lace. With 
those petticoats were worn samares and 
samares-a-potoso, six in number, which were 
evidently jackets or fancy bodies; these 
were of calico, crape, "tartanel," and silk. 
One trimmed with lace was worth three 
pounds. Waistcoats and bodies also appear ; 
also fancy sleeves. Love-hoods of silk and 
cornet-caps with lace make a pretty head- 
gear to complete this costume, with which 
was worn the reim or silver girdle with 
hanging purse, and also with a handsome 
number of diamond, amber, and white coral 
jewels. 

The colors in the Dutch gowns were 
almost uniformly gay, — in keen contrast to 
the sad-colored garments of New England. 
Madam Cornelia de Vos in a green cloth 
petticoat, a red and blue " Haarlamer " waist- 
coat, a pair of red and yellow sleeves, and 
a purple '* Pooyse " apron was a blooming- 
flower-bed of color. 

The dress of Vrouentje Ides Stoffelsen, a 
very capable Dutchwoman who went to 
Bergen Point to live, varied a little from 
that of these town dames. Petticoats she 

12 177 



COLONIAL DAYS 

had, and waistcoats, bodies and sleeves ; but 
there was also homelier attire, — purple and 
blue aprons, four pairs of pattens, a fur cap 
instead of love-hoods, and twenty-three caps. 
She wore the simpler and more universal 
head-gear, — a close linen or calico cap. 

The head covering was of considerable 
importance in New Amsterdam, as it was in 
Holland as well as in England at that date. 
We find that it was also costly. In 1665 
Mistress Piertje Jans sold a fine "little orna- 
mental headdress " for fifty-five guilders to 
the young daughter of Evert Duyckinck. 
But it seems that Missy bought this "gen- 
teel head-clothes " without the knowledge or 
permission of her parents, and on its arrival 
at the Duyckinck home Vrouw Duyckinck 
promptly sent back the emblem of extrava- 
gance and disobedience. Summoned to 
court by the incensed milliner who wished 
no rejected head-dresses on her hands, and 
who claimed that the transaction was from 
the beginning with full cognizance of the 
parents. Father Duyckinck pronounced the 
milliner's bill extortionate; and furthermore 
said gloomily, with a familiar nineteenth- 
century phraseology of New York fathers, 
178 



IN OLD NEW YORK 

that "this was no time to be buying and 
wearing costly head-dresses." But the court 
decided in the milliner's favor. 

It is to be deplored that we have no fashion- 
plates of past centuries to show to us in 
exact presentment the varying modes worn 
by New York dames from year to year; that 
method of fashion-conveying has been adopted 
but a century. The modes in olden days 
travelled from country to country, from town 
to town, in the form of dolls or "babies," as 
they were called, wearing miniature model 
costumes. These dolls were dressed by 
cutters and tailors in Paris or London, and 
with various tiny modish garments were sent 
out on their important mission across the 
water. In Venice a doll attired in the last 
fashions — the toilette of the year — was for 
centuries exhibited on each Ascension Day 
at the " Merceria " for the edification of noble 
Venetian dames, who eagerly flocked to the 
attractive sight. Not less eagerly did Amer- 
ican dames flock to provincial mantua-makers 
and milliners to see the London-dressed 
babies with their miniature garments. Even 
in this century, fashions were brought to 
New York and Philadelphia and Albany 
179 



COLONIAL DAYS 

through " milliners' boxes " containing 
dressed dolls. Mrs. Vanderbilt tells of 
one much admired fashion-doll of her youth 
who had a treasured old age as a juvenile 
goddess. 

A leading man of New Amsterdam, a bur- 
gomaster, had at the time of his death, near 
the end of Dutch rule, this plentiful number 
of substantial garments: a cloth coat with 
silver buttons, a stuff coat, cloth breeches, 
a cloth coat with gimp buttons, a black cloth 
coat, a silk coat, breeches and doublet, a 
silver cloth breeches and doublet, a velvet 
waistcoat with silver lace, a buff coat with 
silk sleeves, three '* gross-green " cloaks, 
several old suits of clothes, linen, hosiery, 
silver-buckled shoes, an ivory-headed cane, 
and a hat. One hat may seem very little 
with so many other garments; but the real 
beaver hats of those days were so substantial, 
so well-made, so truly worthy an article of 
attire, that they could be constantly worn and 
yet last for years. They were costly; some 
were worth several pounds apiece. 

Gayer masculine garments are told of in 
other inventories : green silk breeches flow- 
ered with silver and gold, silver gauze 
i8o 



IN OLD NEW YORK 

breeches, yellow fringed gloves, lacquered 
hats, laced shirts and neck-cloths, and 
(towards the end of the century, and nearly 
through the eighteenth century) a vast variety 
of wigs. For over a hundred years these 
unnatural abominations, which bore no pre- 
tence of resembling the human hair, often 
in grotesque, clumsy, cumbersome shapes, 
bearing equally fantastic names, and made 
of various indifferent and coarse materials, 
loaded the heads and lightened the pockets 
of our ancestors. I am glad to note that 
they were taxed by the government of the 
province of New York. The barber and 
wig-maker soon became a very important 
personage in a community so given over to 
costly modes of dressing the head. Adver- 
tisements in the newspapers show the various 
kinds of wigs worn in the middle of the 
eighteenth century. From the " New York 
Gazette " of May 9, 1737, we learn of a thief's 
stealing "one gray Hair Wig, one Horse 
hair wig not the worse for wearing, one Pale 
Hair Wig, not worn five times, marked V. 
S. E., one brown Natural wig, One old wig 
of goat's hair put in buckle." Buckle 
meant to curl ; and derivatively a wig was in 
181 



COLONIAL DAYS 

buckle when it was rolled on papers for curl- 
ing. Other advertisements tell of *' Perukes, 
Tets, and Fox-tails after the Genteelest 
Fashion. Ladies' Tets and wigs in perfect 
imitation of their own hair." Other curious 
notices are of '' Orange Butter " for " Gentle- 
women to comb up their hair with." 

This use of orange butter as a pomatum 
was certainly unique; it was really a Dutch 
marmalade. I read in my " Closet of Rari- 
ties," dated 1706: — 

"The Dutch Way to make Orange-butter. 
Take new cream two gallons, beat it up to a 
thicknesse, then add half a pint of orange-flower- 
water, and as much red wine, and so being become 
the thicknesse of butter it has both the colour 
and smell of an orange." 

A very characteristic and eye-catching 
advertisement was this from the " New York 
Gazette" of May 21, 1750: — 

''This is to acquaint the Public, that there is 
lately arrived from London the Wonder of the 
World, an Honest Barber and Peruke Maker, who 
might have worked for the King, if his Majesty 
would have employed him : It was not for the 
want of Money he came here, for he had enough 
of that at Home, nor for the want of Business, 
182 



IN OLD NEW YORK 

that he advertises hinself, BUT to acquaint the 
Gentlemen and Ladies, That Such a Person is 
now in Town, Hving near Rosemary La?ie where 
Gentlemen and Ladies may be supplied with 
Goods as follows, viz. : Tyes, Full-Bottoms, Ma- 
jors, Spencers, Fox-Tails, Ramalies, Tacks, cut 
and bob Perukes : Also Ladies Tatematongues 
and Towers after the Manner that is now wore 
at Court. By their Humble and Obedient Servant^ 

"John Still." 

With the change from simple Dutch ways 
of hairdressing came in other details more 
constrained modes of dressing. With the 
wig-maker came the stay-maker, whose 
curious advertisements may be read in scores 
in the provincial newspapers; and his arbi- 
trary fashions bring us to modern times. 

From the deacons' records of the Dutch 
Reformed Church at Albany we catch occa- 
sional hints of the dress of the children of 
the Dutch colonists. There was no poor- 
house, and few poor; but since the church 
occasionally helped worthy folk who were not 
rich, we find the deacons in 1665 and 1666 
paying for blue linen for schorteldoecykers, 
or aprons, for Albany kindeken ; also for 
haake^t en oogen, or hooks and eyes, for warm 
183 



COLONIAL DAYS 

under-waists called borsrockyen. They bought 
linen for liiyers, which were neither pinning- 
blankets nor diapers, but a sort of swaddling 
clothes, which evidently were worn then by 
Dutch babies. Voor-schooten, which were 
white bibs ; neerstucken, which were tuckers, 
also were worn by little children. Some 
little Hans of Pieter had given to him by 
the deacons a fine little scarlet aperock^ or 
monkey-jacket; and other children were 
furnished linen cosynties, or night-caps with 
capes. Yellow stockings were sold at the 
same time for children, and a gay little yel- 
low turkey-legged Dutchman in a scarlet 
monkey-jacket and fat little breeches must 
have been a jolly sight. 



184 



IN OLD NEW YORK 



CHAPTER X 

HOLIDAYS 

The most important holidays of the early 
years of the colony were, apparently, New 
Year's Day and May Day, for we find them 
named through frequent legislation about 
rioting on these days, repairing of damages, 
etc. It has been said that New Yorkers owe 
to the Dutch an everlasting gratitude for our 
high-stoop houses and the delights of over 
two centuries of New Year's calling. The 
latter custom lived long and happily in our 
midst, died a lingering and lamented death, is 
still much honored in our memory, and its 
extinction deeply deplored and unwillingly 
accepted. 

The observance of New Year's Day was, 
without doubt, followed by both Dutch and 
English from the earliest settlement We 
know that Governor Stuyvesant received 
New Year's calls, and we also know that he 
185 



COLONIAL DAYS 

prohibited excessive " drunken drinking," 
unnecessary firing of guns, and all disorderly 
behavior on that day. The reign of the 
English did not abolish New Year's visits ; 
and we find Charles Wolley, an English 
chaplain, writing in his journal in New York 
in 1 701, of the addition of the English custom 
of exchange of gifts : — 

*'The English in New York observed one 
anniversary custom and that without superstition, 
I mean the strenarum commercium, as Suetonius 
calls them, a neighborly commerce of presents 
every New Year's Day. Some would send me a 
sugar-loaf, some a pair of gloves, some a bottle 
or two of wine." 

A further celebration of the day by men 
in New York was by going in parties to 
Beekman's Swamp to shoot at turkeys. 

New Year's calling was a new fashion to 
General Washington when he came to 
New York to live for a short time, but he 
adopted it with approval; and his New 
Year's Receptions were imposing functions. 

For a long time the New Year was ushered 

in, in country towns, with great noise as well 

as rejoicing. All through the day groups of 

men would go from house to house firing 

186 



IN OLD NEW YORK 

salutes, and gathering gradually into large 
parties by recruits from each house until the 
end of the day was spent in firing at a mark. 
The Legislature in March, 1773, attempted to 
stop the gun-firing, asserting that '' great 
damages are frequently done on the eve of 
the last day of December and on the first and 
second days of January by persons going 
from house to house with guns and other 
firearms." In 1785 a similar enactment was 
passed by the State Legislature. 

In the palmiest days of New Year's calling, 
New York City appeared one great family 
reunion. Every wheeled vehicle in the town 
seemed to be loaded with visitors going from 
house to house. Great four and six horse 
stages packed with hilarious mobs of men 
went to the house of every acquaintance of 
every one in the stage. Target companies 
had processions; political bodies called on 
families whose head was well known in politi- 
cal life. The newspaper-carriers brought out 
addresses yards long with rhymes : — 

*' The day devoted is to mirth, 
And now around the social hearth 
Friendship unlocks her genial springs, 
And Harmony her lyre now strings. 

187 



COLONIAL DAYS 

While plenty spreads her copious hoard, 
And piles and crowns the festive board," 

etc., etc., for hundreds of lines. 

The " copious hoard " of substantial food, 
with decanters of wine, bowls of milk punch, 
and pitchers of egg-nog, no longer ** crown the 
festive board " on New Year's Day; but we still 
have New Year's Cakes, though not dehvered 
by singing bakers' 'prentices as of yore. 

May Day was observed in similar fashion, 
— by firing of guns, gay visiting, and also by 
the rearing of maypoles. 

A very early mention of a maypole is in 
June, 1645, when one William Garritse had 
" sung a libellous song " against Rev. Francis 
Doughty, the preacher at Flushing, Long 
Island, and was sentenced in punishment 
therefor to be tied to the maypole, which in 
June was still standing. Stuyvesant again for- 
bade ''drunken drinking," and firing of guns 
and planting of maypoles, as productive of 
bad practices. I don't know whether the de- 
light of my childhood, and of generations of 
children in Old and New England up to this 
present May Day on which I am now writing, 
• — the hanging of May baskets, — ever made 
happy children in New York. 
188 



IN OLD NEW YORK 

There was some observance in New York 
of Shrovetide as a holiday-time. As early as 
1657 we find the sober Beverwyck burghers 
deliberating on " some improprieties com- 
mitted at the house of Albert de Timmerman 
on Shrovetide last." As was the inevitable 
custom followed by the extremely uninven- 
tive brain of the seventeenth and eighteenth 
century rioter, were he Dutch or English, 
these " improprieties" took the form of the 
men's parading in women's clothes ; Pieter 
Semiensen was one of the masqueraders. 
Two years later the magistrates were again 
investigating the " unseemly and scandalous " 
celebration of Shrovetide ; and as ever before, 
the youth of early Albany donned women's 
clothes and '* marched as mountebanks," as 
the record says, just as they did in Philadel- 
phia and Baltimore and even in sober Boston. 
We find also for sale in Beverwyck at this 
time, noisy Shrovetide toys — rommelerytiens y 
little " rumbling-pots," which the youth and 
children doubtless keenly enjoyed. 

At an early date Shrovetide observances, 
such as ** pulling the goose," were prohibited 
by Governor Stuyvesant in New York. A 
mild protest on the part of some of the 



COLONIAL DAYS 

burgomasters against this order of the Gov- 
ernor brought forth one of Stuyvesant's char- 
acteristically choleric edicts in answer, in 
which he speaks of having " interdicted and 
forbidden certain farmers' servants to ride 
the croose at the feast of Backus and Shrove- 
tide . . . because it is altogether unprofita- 
ble, unnecessary, and criminal for subjects 
and neighbors to celebrate such pagan and 
popish feasts and to practise such customs, 
notwithstanding the same may in some 
places of Fatherland be tolerated and looked 
at through the fingers." Domine Blom, of 
Kingston or Wyltwyck, joined in the gov- 
ernor's dislike of the game. But there were 
some of the magistrates who liked very well 
to ''pull the goose" themselves, so it is said. 
It was a cruel amusement. The thoroughly 
greased goose was hung between two poles, 
and the effort of the sport was to catch, 
snatch away, and hold fast the poor creature 
while passing at great speed. In Albany in 
1677 all ''Shrovetide misdemeanors were 
prohibited, viz. : riding at a goose, cat, hare, 
and ale." The fine was twenty-five guilders 
in sea-want. What the cat, hare, and ale part 
of the sport was, I do not know. 
190 



IN OLD NEW YORK 

In New York by the middle of the eigh- 
teenth century Shrove Tuesday was firmly 
assigned to cocking-mains. The De Lanceys 
were patrons of this choice old English sport. 
Cock-gaffs of silver and steel were freely 
offered for sale in New York and Maryland 
newspapers, and on Shrove Tuesday in 1770 
Jacob Hiltzeheimer attended a famous cock- 
fight on the Germantown road. We cannot 
blame honest New Yorkers if they did 
not rise above such rude sports, when 
cock-fighting and cock-throwing and cock- 
squoiling and cock-steling obtained every- 
where in Old England at Shrovetide; when 
school-boys had cock-fights in their school- 
rooms ; and in earlier days good and learned 
old Roger Ascham ruined himself by betting 
on cock-fights, and Sir Thomas More boasted 
proudly of his skill in** casting a cock-stele." 

Mr. Gabriel Furman, writing in 1846, told of 
an extraordinary observance of Saint Valen- 
tine's Day by the Dutch — one I think un- 
known in folk-lore — which obtained on Long 
Island among the early settlers. It was called 
Vrouweji dagh, or Women's day, and vv^as thus 
celebrated : Every young girl sallied forth in 
the morning armed with a heavy cord with 
191 



COLONIAL DAYS 

knotted end. She gave to every young man 
whom she met several smart lashes with the 
knotted cord. Perhaps these were " love- 
taps," and were given with no intent of sting- 
ing. Judge Egbert Benson wrote, in 1816, 
that in New York this custom dwindled to a 
similar Valentine observance by New York 
children, when the girls chased the boys with 
many blows. In one school the boys asked 
for a Mannen dagh in which to repay the 
girls' stinging lashes. I hazard a " wide solu- 
tion," as Sir Thomas Browne says, that this 
custom is a commemorative survival of an 
event in the life of Saint Valentine, one of the 
two traditions which are all we know of his life, 
that about the year 270 he was "first beaten 
with heavy clubs and then beheaded." 

The English brought a political holiday to 
New York. In the code of laws given to the 
province in 1665, and known as *' The Duke's 
Laws," each minister throughout the province 
was ordered to preach a sermon on Novem- 
ber 5, to commemorate the English deliver- 
ance from Guy Fawkes and the Gunpowder 
Plot in 1605. 

From an early entry in the " New York 
Gazette" of November 7, 1737, we learn how 
192 



IN OLD NEW YORK 

it was celebrated that year, and find that 
illuminations, as in England, formed part of 
the day's remembrance. Bonfires, fantastic 
processions, and "burning a Guy" formed, in 
fact, the chief English modes of celebration. 

" Saturday last, being the fifth of November, it 
was observed here in Memory of that horrid and 
Treasonable Popish Gun-Powder Plot to blow up 
and destroy King, Lords and Commons, and the 
Gentlemen of his Majesty's Council ; the Assembly 
and Corporation and other the principal Gentle- 
men and Merchants of this City waited upon his 
Honor the Lieutenant-Governor at Fort George, 
where the Royal Healths were drunk, as usual, 
under the discharge of the Cannon, and at the 
Night the city was illuminated." 

All through the English provinces bon- 
fires were burned, effigies were carried in 
procession, mummers and masqueraders 
thronged the streets and invaded the houses 
singing Pope Day rhymes, and volleys of 
guns were fired. In some New England 
towns the boys still have bonfires on 
November 5th. 

In the year 1765 the growing feeling 
with regard to the Stamp Act chancing to 
come to a climax in the late autumn, pro- 
13 193 



COLONIAL DAYS 

duced in New York a very riotous observance 
of Pope's Day. The demonstrations really 
began on November ist, which was termed 
" The Last Day of Liberty. " In the evening 
a mob gathered, "designing to execute some 
foolish ceremony of burying Liberty," but it 
dispersed with noise and a few broken win- 
dows. The next night a formidable mob 
gathered, "carrying candles and torches in 
their hands, and now and then firing a pistol 
at the Effigy which was carried in a Chair." 
Then the effigy was set in the Governor's 
chariot, which was taken out of the Fort. 
They made a gallows and hung on it an effigy 
of the Governor and one of the Devil, and 
carried it to the Fort, over which insult sol- 
diers and officers were wonderfully patient. 
Finally, gallows, chariot and effigies were 
all burnt in the Bowling Green. The mob 
then ransacked Major James's house, eating, 
drinking, destroying, till £iSOO of damage 
was done. The next day it was announced 
that the delivery and destruction of the 
stamps would be demanded. In the evening 
the mob started out again, with candles and 
a barber's block dressed in rags. The 
rioters finally dispersed at the entreaties of 
194 



ftj OLD NEW YORK 

many good citizens, — among them Robert R. 
Livingstone, who wrote the letter from which 
this account is taken. In 1774, November 
5th was still a legal holiday. 

There still exists in New York a feeble 
and divided survival of the processions and 
bonfires of Guy Fawkes Day. The police- 
prohibited bonfires of barrels on election 
night, and the bedraggled parade of begging 
boys on Thanksgiving Day are our reminders 
to-day of this old English holiday. 

There was one old-time holiday beloved 
of New Yorkers whose name is now almost 
forgotten, — Pinkster Day. This name was 
derived from the Dutch word for Pentecost, 
and must have been used at a very early 
date; for in a Dutch book of sermons, writ- 
ten by Adrian Fischer, and printed in 1667, 
the title of one sermon reads: Het Eersts 
Tractact; Van de Uystortnge des Yeyligen 
Geests over de Apostelen op ben Phickster 
Dagk, — a sermon upon the story of the 
Descent of the Holy Ghost on the Apostles 
on Pinkster Day. 

The Jewish feast of Pentecost was obser\^ed 
on the fiftieth day after the celebration of the 
Passover, and is the same as the Christian 
195 



COLONIAL DAYS 

holy-day Whitsunday, which is connected 
with its Jewish predecessor historically (as 
is so beautifully told in the second chapter 
of Acts), and intrinsically through its re- 
ligious signification. The week following 
Whitsunday has been observed with great 
honor and rejoicing in many lands, but in 
none more curiously, more riotously, than 
in old New York, and to some extent in 
Pennsylvania and Maryland; and, more 
strangely still, that observance was chiefly 
by an alien, a heathen race, — the negroes. 
It was one of our few distinctively Ameri- 
can folk-customs, and its story has been told 
by many writers of that day, and should not 
now be forgotten. Nowhere was it a more 
glorious festival than at Albany, among the 
sheltered, the cherished slave population in 
that town and its vicinity. The celebration 
was held on Capitol Hill, then universally 
known as Pinkster Hill. Munsell gives 
this account of the day : — 

" Pinkster was a great day, a gala day, or rather 
week, for they used to keep it up a week among 
the darkies. The dances were the original Congo 
dances as danced in their native Africa. They had 
a chief, — Old King Charley. The old setders 
196 



IN OLD NEW YORK 

said Charley was a prince in his own country, and 
was supposed to have been one hundred and 
twenty-five years old at the time of his death. On 
these festivals old Charley was dressed in a strange 
and fantastical costume ; he was nearly barelegged, 
wore a red military coat trimmed profusely with 
variegated ribbons, and a small black hat with a 
pompon stuck on one side. The dances and antics 
of the darkies must have afforded great amusement 
for the ancient burghers. As a general thing, the 
music consisted of a sort of drum, or instrument 
constructed out of a box with sheepskin heads, 
upon which old Charley did most of the beating, 
accompanied by singing some queer African air. 
Charley generally led off the dance, when the 
Sambos and Phillises, juvenile and antiquated, 
would put in the double-shuffle heel-and-toe break- 
down. These festivals seldom failed to attract large 
crowds from the city, as well as from the rural 
districts." 

Dr. Eights, of Albany, wrote still further 
reminiscences of the day. He said that, 
strangely enough, though all the booths and 
sports opened on Monday, white curiosity- 
seekers were, on that first day, the chief 
visitors to Pinkster Hill. On Tuesday the 
blacks all appeared, and the consumption of 
gingerbread, cider, and applejack began. 
197 



COLONIAL DAYS 

Adam Blake, a truly elegant creature, the 
body-servant of the old patroon Van Rens- 
selaer, was master of the ceremonies. Char- 
ley, the King, was a "Guinea man" from 
Angola, — and I have noted the fact that 
nearly all African -born negroes who became 
leaders in this country, or men of marked 
note in any way, have been Guinea men. 
He wore portions of the costume of a British 
general, and had the power of an autocrat, 
— his will was law. Dr. Eights says the 
Pinkster musical instruments were eel-pots 
covered with dressed sheepskin, on which 
the negroes pounded with their bare hands, 
as do all savage nations on their tom-toms. 
Their song had an African refrain, "Hi-a- 
bomba-bomba-bomba." Other authorities 
state that the dance was called the "Toto 
Dance," and partook so largely of savage 
license that at last the white visitors shunned 
being present during its performance. 

These Pinkster holidays became such bac- 
chanalian revels in other ways that in 1811 
the Common Council of Albany prohibited 
the erection of booths and all dancing, gam- 
ing, and drinking at that time; and when the 
negroes could not dance nor drink, it was 
198 



IN OLD NEW YORK 

but a sorry holiday, and quickly fell into 
desuetude. 

Executions were held on Pinkster Hill, 
and other public punishments took place 
there. 

In the realm of fiction we find evidence of 
the glories of Pinkster Day in New York. 
Cooper, in his "Satanstoe," tells of its 
observance in New York City. He calls it 
the saturnalia of the blacks, and says that 
they met on what we now know as City 
Hall Park, and that the negroes came for 
thirty or forty miles around to join in the 
festivities. 

On Long Island Pinkster Day was widely 
observed. The blacks went, on the week 
previous to the celebration, to Brooklyn and 
New York to sell sassafras and swingling- 
tow, to earn their scanty spending-money for 
Pinkster. They were everywhere freely 
given their time for rioting, and domestic 
labor was performed by the masters and 
mistresses; but they had to provide their 
own spending-money for gingerbread and 
rum. They gathered around the old market 
in Brooklyn near the ferry, dancing for eels, 
blowing fish-horns, eating and drinking. 
199 



COLONIAL DAYS 

The following morning the judge's office was 
full of sorry blacks, hauled up for ''disor- 
derly conduct. " 

On Long Island the Dutch residents also 
made the day a festival, "going to pinkster 
fields for pinkster frolics," exchanging visits, 
and drinking schnapps, and eating "soft- 
wafels " together. About twelve years ago, 
while driving through Flatlands and New 
Lots one beautiful day in May, I met a 
group of young men driving from door to 
door of the farm-houses, in wagons gayly 
dressed with branches of dogwood blossoms, 
and entering each house for a short visit. I 
asked whether a wedding or a festival were 
being held in the town, and was answered 
that it was an old Dutch custom to make 
visits that week. I tried to learn whence 
this observance came, but no one knew its 
reason for being, or what holiday was ob- 
served. Poor Pinkster ! still vaguely honored 
as a shadow, a ghost of the past, but with 
your very name forgotten, even among the 
children of those who gave to you in this 
land a name and happy celebration ! 

Various wild flowers were knov/n as Pink- 
ster flowers. The beautiful azalea that once 
200 



IN OLD NEW YORK 

bloomed — indeed does still bloom — so 
plentifully throughout New York in May, 
was universally known as "pinkster flower" 
or "pinkster bloom," and along the banks 
of the Hudson till our own day was called 
"pinkster blummachee." The traveller 
Kalm noted it in 1740, and called it by that 
name. Mrs. Vanderbilt calls it "pinkster 
bloomitze." I was somewhat surprised to 
hear a Rhode Island farmer, in the summer 
of 1893, ask me whether he should not pick 
me "some pinkster blossoms," pointing at 
the same time to the beautiful swamp pink 
that flushed with rosy glow the tangles of 
vines and bushes on the edge of the Narra- 
gansett woods. It is interesting to know that 
by many authorities the name *'pink, " of our 
common garden flower, is held to be derived 
from the Dutch Pinkster, German Pfifigsten, 
and owes its name, not to its pink color, but 
to the s'eason of its blooming. In other 
localities in New York and New Jersey the 
blue flag or iris was known as "pinkster 
bloom." 

Throughout New England the black resi- 
dents, free and in bondage, held high hol- 
iday one day in May, or in some localities 

20I 



COLONIAL DAYS 

during the first week in June; but the day 
of revelry was everywhere called " Nigger 
'Lection." In Puritandom the observance 
of Whitsunday was believed to have " super- 
stition writ on its forehead;" but Election 
Day was a popular and properly Puritanical 
May holiday; therefore the negro holiday 
took a similar name, and the ** Black Gov- 
ernor " was elected on the week following the 
election of the white Governor, usually on 
Saturday. 

There was some celebration of days of 
thanksgiving in New Netherland as in Hol- 
land; they were known by a peculiar double 
name, fast-prayer and thank-day. These days 
did not develop among the Dutch in the 
new world into the position of importance 
they held among English colonists. In 1644 
the first public Thanksgiving Day whose 
record has come down to us was proclaimed 
in gratitude for the safe return of the Dutch 
warriors after a battle with the Connecticut 
Indians on Strickland's Plains near Stamford. 
A second Thanksgiving service was announced 
for the 6th of September, 1645, whereon God 
was to be *' specially thanked, praised, and 
blessed for suffering" the long-wished-for 
20^ 



IN OLD NEW YORK 

peace with the Indians. This service was 
held on Wednesday, which was usually the 
chosen day of the week. In 1654, at a 
Thanksgiving ordered on account of the 
peace established between England and the 
Netherlands, services were to be held in 
the morning; the citizens were to be per- 
mitted **to indulge in all moderate festiv- 
ities and rejoicings as the event recommends 
and their Situation Shall permit." That 
these festivities were not always decorous 
is shown by the fining and punishment of 
some young lads for drunkenness on one 
Thanksgiving Day. 

Various were the causes of the commemo- 
rative services: peace between Spain and 
the Fatherland; the prosperity of the prov- 
ince, its peace, increased people, and trade ; 
a harvest of self-sown grain (the fields having 
been deserted for fear of Indians). In 1664 
Domine Brown, of Wyltwyck, asked for an 
established annual Thanksgiving ; but there 
are no records to show that this desire was 
carried out, though from 1690 to 17 10 they 
were held almost every year. 



203 



COLONIAL DAYS 



CHAPTER XI 

AMUSEMENTS AND SPORTS 

Daniel Denton, one of the original set- 
tlers of Jamaica, Long Island, wrote " A 
briefe Description of New York" in 1670. 
When he speaks of the " fruits natural to the 
island " of Long Island, he ends his account 
thus : — 

" Such abundance of strawberries is in June that 
the fields and woods are dyed red ; which the 
country people perceiving, instantly arm themselves 
with bottles of wine, cream, and sugar, and instead 
of a coat of Mail every one takes a Female upon 
his Horse behind him, and so rushing violently 
into the fields, never leave till they have disrobed 
them of their red colors and turned them into the 
old habit." 

" Rushing violently into the fiields " seems 
to have been the normal condition of all the 
colonists as soon as the tardy American 
" spring came slowly up the way." On every 

204 



IN OLD NEW YORK 

hand they turned eagerly to open-air outings. 
Houses chafed them; gipsy-like were they 
in their love of fresh air and the country 
wilds. 

In New York were the bouweries close at 
hand; and Nutten Island (now Governor's 
Island), ** by y^ making of a garden and plant- 
ing severall walks of fruit trees in it," made 
a pretty outing-spot. Mrs. Grant wrote at 
length of the Albany youth and their love 
of out-of-door excursions : — 

" In spring, eight or ten of the young people of 
one company, or related to each other, young 
men and maidens, would set out together in a 
canoe on a kind of rural excursion, of which amuse- 
ment was the object. Yet so fixed were their 
habits of industry that they never failed to carry 
their work-baskets with them, not as a form, but 
as an ingredient necessarily mixed with their pleas- 
ures. They had no attendants, and steered a de- 
vious course of four, five, or perhaps more miles, 
till they arrived at some of the beautiful islands 
with which this fine river abounded, or at some 
sequestered spot on its banks, where delicious 
wild fruits, or particular conveniences for fishing, 
afforded some attraction. There they generally 
arrived by nine or ten o'clock, having set out in 
the cool and early hour of sunrise. ... A basket 
205 



COLONIAL DAYS 

with tea, sugar, and the other usual provisions for 
breakfast, with the apparatus for cooking it ; a 
httle rum and fruit for making cool weak punch, 
the usual beverage in the middle of the day, and 
now and then some cold pastry, was the sole pro- 
vision ; for the great affair was to depend on the 
sole exertions of the boys in procuring fish, wild 
ducks, &c., for their dinner. They were all, like 
Indians, ready and dexterous with the axe, gun, 
&c. Whenever they arrived at their destination, 
they sought out a dry and beautiful spot opposite 
to the river, and in an instant with their axes 
cleared so much superfluous shade or shrubbery as 
left a semicircular opening, above which they bent 
and twined the boughs, so as to form a pleasant 
bower, while the girls gathered dried branches, to 
which one of the youths soon set fire with gun- 
powder, and the breakfast, a very regular and 
cheerful one, occupied an hour or two. The young 
men then set out to fish, or perhaps to shoot birds, 
and the maidens sat busily down to their work. 
After the sultry hours had been thus employed, the 
boys brought their tribute from the river or the 
wood, and found a rural meal prepared by their 
fair companions, among whom were generally their 
sisters and the chosen of their hearts. After din- 
ner they all set out together to gather wild straw- 
berries, or whatever other fruit was in season ; for 
it was accounted a reflection to come home empty- 
handed. When wearied of this amusement, they 
206 



IN OLD NEW YORK 

either drank tea in their bower, or, returning, 
landed at some friend's on the way, to partake of 
that refreshment." 

Suburban taverns were much resorted to at 
a little later date by all town-folk, and " ladies 
and gentlemen were entertained in the gen- 
teelest manner." New Yorkers specially liked 
the fish-dinners furnished at an inn perched 
on Brooklyn Heights ; and twice a week they 
could drive to a turtle-feast at a beloved 
retreat on the East River, always taking much 
care to return over the Kissing Bridge, where, 
says with approval a reverend gentleman, a 
traveller of ante-Revolutionary days, '' it is 
part of the etiquette to salute the lady who 
has put herself under your protection." 
More idyllic still was the rowing across the 
river to Brooklyn, to the noble tulip-tree near 
the ferry, with its great spreading shadowy 
branches, so cool in summer suns, and glori- 
ous with tropical blooms, and hospitable with 
a vast shining hollow trunk which would hold 
six or eight happy summer revellers within 
the sheltering walls. Would I could sing The 
Tulip-Tree as Cowper did The Sofa ; with its 
happy summer groups, its beauty, its pathetic 
end, and the simple joys it sheltered, — as 
207 



COLONIAL DAYS 

extinct as the species to which the tree itself 
belongs ! 

Occasional glimpses of pretty country 
hospitality in country homes are afforded 
through old-time letters. One of the Ruther- 
furd letters reads: — 

"We were very elegantly entertained at the 
Clarks', and everything of their own production. 
By way of amusement after dinner we all went 
into the garden to pick roses. We gathered a 
large basket full, and prepared them for distiUing. 
As I had never seen Rose-water made, Mrs. Clark 
got her still and set it going, and made several 
bottles while we were there. They were extremely 
civil, and begged us whenever we rode that way in 
the evening to stop and take a syllabub with 
them." 

This certainly presents a very dainty scene ; 
the sweet June rose-garden, the delicate 
housewifery, the drinking of syllabubs make 
it seem more French than plain New York 
Dutch in tone and color. 

The Dutch were no haters of games as 
were the Puritans ; games were known and 
played even in the time of the first settlers. 
Steven Janse had a tick-tack bort at Fort 
Orange. Tick-tack was a complicated kind 
208 



IN OLD NEW YORK 

of backgammon, played with both men and 
pegs. '* The Compleat Gamester" says tick- 
tack is so called from touch and take, for if 
you touch a man you must play him though 
to your loss. ** Tick-tacking " was prohibited 
during time of divine service in New Amster- 
dam in 1656. Another Dutch tapster had a 
trock-table, which Florio says was " a kind of 
game used in England with casting little 
bowles at a boord with thirteen holes in it." 
A trock-table was a table much like a 
pool table, on which an ivory ball was struck 
under a wire wicket by a cue. Trock was 
also played on the grass, — a seventeenth- 
century modification of croquet. Of bowling 
we hear plenty of talk; it was universally 
played, from clergy down to negro slaves, 
and a famous street in New York, the Bowl- 
ing Green, perpetuates its popularity. The 
English brought card-playing and gaming, to 
which the Dutch never abandoned themselves. 
By the middle of the eighteenth century 
we find more amusements and a gayer life. 
The first regularly banded company of come- 
dians which played in New York strayed 
thence from Philadelphia in March, 1750, 
where they had been bound over to good 
^4 209 



COLONIAL DAYS 

behavior, and where their departure had 
given much joy to a disgusted Quaker com- 
munity. It was called Murray and Kean's 
company, and sprung up in Philadelphia like 
a toadstool in a night, from whence or how 
no one knows. The comedians announced 
their " sitting down " in New York for the 
season. They opened with King Richard 
III., " written by Shakespeare and improved 
by CoUey Gibber." They also played " The 
Beau in the Sudds," *' The Spanish Fryer," 
"The Orphan," *' The Beau's Stratagem," 
"The Constant Couple," "The Lying Valet," 
"The Twin Rivals," "Colin and Phoebe," 
" Love for Love," " The Stagecoach," 
" The Recruiting Officer," " Cato," " Am- 
phitryon," " Sir Harry Wildair," " George 
Barnwell," " Bold Stroke for a Wife," 
"Beggar's Opera," "The Mock Doctor," 
" The Devil to Pay," " The Fair Penitent," 
" The Virgin Unmasked," " Miss in her 
Teens," and a variety of pantomimes and 
farces. This was really a very good series of 
bills, but the actors were a sorry lot. One 
was a redemptioner, Mrs. Davis, and she had 
a benefit to help to buy her freedom; an- 
other desired a benefit, as he was "just out of 

2IO 



IN OLD NEW YORK 

prison." They were in town ten months, and 
seem to have been on very friendly term.s 
with the public, borrowing single copies of 
plays to study from, having constant benefits, 
ending with one for Mr. Kean, in which one 
Mrs. Taylor was " out so much in her part " 
that she had to be apologized for afterwards 
in the newspapers. She had a benefit shortly 
after, at which, naturally and properly, there 
" was n't much company." Miss George at 
her benefit had bad weather and other dis- 
appointments, and tried it over again. At 
last Mr. Kean, *' by the advice of several 
Gentlemen having resolv'd to quit the stage 
and follow his Employment of writing and 
hopes for Encouragement," sold his half of 
" his cloaths " and the stage effects for a 
benefit, at which if the house had been full to 
overflowing the whole receipts would not 
have been more than two hundred and fifty 
dollars. John Tremain also "declined the 
stage " and went to cabinet-making, — " plain 
and scallopt tea-tables, etc.," — which was very 
sensible, since tea was more desired than the 
drama. A new company sprung up, but 
" mett with small encouragement," though 
the company " assured the PubHck they are 

211 



COLONIAL DAYS 

Perfect and hope to Perform to Satisfaction." 
Perhaps the expression ** the Part of Lavinia 
will be Attempted by Mrs. Tremain " was a 
wise one. All this was at a time when a 
good theatrical company could easily have 
been obtained in England, where the art of 
the actor was at a high standard. 

We gain a notion of some rather trying 
manners at these theatres. The English cus- 
tom of gentlemen's crowding on the stage 
increased to such an extent, and proved so 
deleterious to any good representation of the 
play, that the manager advertised in ** Gaines' 
Mercury," in 1762, that no spectators would 
be permitted to stand or sit on the stage 
during the performance. And also a reproof 
was printed to '' the person so very rude as 
to throw Eggs from the Gallery upon the 
stage, to the injury of Cloaths." 

For some years a Mr. Bonnin, a New York 
fishmonger, entertained his fellow-citizens 
and those of neighboring towns with various 
scientific exhibits, lectures, camera obscuras, 
'* prospects " and *' perspectives," curious ani- 
mals, " Philosophical-Optical machines " and 
wax-works, and manifold other performances, 
which he ingeniously altered and renamed. 
212 



IN OLD NEW YORK 

He was a splendid advertiser. The news- 
papers of the times contain many of his 
attempts to catch the public attention. I give 
two as an example : — 

" We hear that Mr. Bonnin is so crouded with 
company to view his Perspectives, that he can 
scarce get even so much time as to eat, drink or 
say his Prayers, from the time he gets out of bed 
till He repairs to it again : and it is the Opinion 
of some able Physicians that if he makes rich, it 
must be at the Expense of the Health of his Body, 
and of some Learned Divines it must be at the 
Expense of the Welfare of His Soul." 

"The common topics of discourse here since 
the coming of Mr. Bonnin are entirely changed. 
Instead of the common chat nothing is scarce 
mentioned now but the most entertaining parts of 
Europe which are represented so lively in Mr. 
Bonnin's curious Prospects." 

Mr. Bonnin is now but a shadow of the 
past, vanished like his puppets into nowhere ; 
in his own far "perspective" of a century 
and a half, he seems to me amusing; at any 
rate, he was all that New Yorkers had many 
times to amuse them; and I think he must 
have been a jolly lecturer, when he v/as such 
a jolly advertiser. 

213 



COLONIAL DAYS 

Also in evidence before the public was one 
Pachebell, a musician. The following is one 
of his advertisements in the year 1734: — 

"On Wednesday the 21st of January instant 
there will be a Consort of music, vocal and instru- 
mental for the benefit of Mr. Pachebell, the harp- 
sicord parts performed by himself. The songs, 
violins and German flutes by private hands. The 
Consort will begin precisely at six o'clock in the 
house of Robert Todd vintner. Tickets to be had 
at the Coffee House at 4 shillings." 

Amateurs often performed for his benefit, 
and even portions of oratorios were '' at- 
tempted." His *' consorts " were said to be 
ravishing, and inspired the listeners to rhap- 
sodic poesy, which is more than can be said 
of many concerts nowadays. Those who 
know the " thin metallic thrills " of a harpsi- 
chord — an instrument with no resonance, mel- 
lowness, or singing quality — can reflect upon 
the susceptibility of our ancestors, who could 
melt into sentiment and rhyme over those 
wiry vibrations. 

The favorite winter amusement in New 
York, as in Philadelphia, was riding in sleighs, 
a fashion which the Dutch brought from Hol- 
land. The English colonists in New England 
214 



IN OLD NEW YORK 

were slov/er to adopt sleighs for carriages, 
and never in early days found sleighing a 
sport. The bitter New England weather did 
not attract sleighers. 

Madam Knights, a Boston visitor to New 
York, wrote in 1704: — 

" Their diversion in winter is riding in sleighs 
about three miles out of town, where they have 
houses of entertainment at a place called the 
Bowery; and some go to friends' houses, who 
handsomely treat them. I beUeve we mett fifty or 
sixty sleighs one day; they fly with great swift- 
ness, and some are so furious that they turn out 
for none except a loaded cart." 

An English parson, one Burnaby, visiting 
New York in 1759, wrote of their delightful 
sleighing-parties ; and Mrs. Anne Grant thus 
adds her testimony of similar pleasures in 
Albany : — 

" In winter the river, frozen to a great depth, 
formed the principal road through the country, 
and was the scene of all those amusements of 
skating and sledge races, common to the north 
of Europe. They used in great parties to visit 
their friends at a distance, and having an excellent 
and hardy breed of horses, flew from place to 
place over the snow or ice in these sledges with 
incredible rapidity, stopping a little while at every 
215 



COLONIAL DAYS 

honse they came to, and always well received 
whether acquainted with the owners or not. The 
night never impeded these travellers, for the at- 
mosphere was so pure and serene, and the snow 
so reflected the moon and star-light, that the 
nights exceeded the days in beauty." 

William Livingstone, when he was twenty- 
one years old, wrote in 1744 of a '* waffle- 
frolic," which was an amusement then in 
vogue : — 

"We had the wafel-frolic at Miss Walton's 
talked of before your departure. The feast as 
usual was preceded by cards, and the company so 
numerous that they filled two tables ; after a few 
games, a magnificent supper appeared in grand 
order and decorum, but for my own part I was 
not a little grieved that so luxurious a feast should 
come under the name of a wafel-frolic, because if 
this be the case I must expect but a few wafel- 
frolics for the future; the frolic was closed up 
with ten sunburnt virgins lately co7ne from Colum- 
bus's Newfoundland J besides a play of my ov/n 
invention which I have not room enough to de- 
scribe at present. However, kissing constitutes a 
great part of its entertainment." 

Kissing seemed to constitute a great part 
of the entertainment at evening parties every- 
where at that time. 

216 



IN OLD NEW YORK 

As soon as the English obtained control of 
New York, they established English sports and 
pastimes, among them fox-hunting. Long 
Island afforded good sport. During the 
autumn three days* hunting was permitted 
at Flatbush; in other towns the chase was 
stolen fun. A woman-satirist, with a spirited 
pen, had her fling in rhyme at fox-hunting. 
Here are a few of her lines : — 

" A fox is killed by twenty men, 
That fox perhaps had killed a hen. 
A gallant art no doubt is here, 
All wicked foxes ought to fear, 
When twenty dogs and twenty men 
Can kill a fox that killed a hen." 

Fox-hunting was never very congenial, 
apparently, to those of Dutch descent and 
Dutch characteristics; nor was cock-fighting, 
the prevalence of which I have noted in the 
preceding chapter. Occasionally we hear of 
the cruel sport of bull-baiting, though not till 
the latter half of the eighteenth century. In 
1763 the keeper of the DeLancey Arms on 
the Bowery Lane gave a bull-baiting. Brook- 
lyn was specially favored in that respect dur- 
ing the Revolution, when the British officers 
took charge of and enjoyed the barbarism, 
217 



COLONIAL DAYS 

and Landlord Loosely of the King's Head 
Tavern helped in the arrangements and ad- 
vertising. Good active bulls and strong 
dogs were in much demand. The news- 
papers of the times contain many advertise- 
ments of the sport. One in poor rhyme 
begins : — 

" This notice gives to all who covet 
Baiting the bull and dearly love it." etc. 

I frequently recall, as I pass through a quiet 
street near my home, that in the year 1774 a 
bull-baiting was held there every afternoon 
for many months, and I resolutely demolish 
that hollow idol — the good old times — and 
rejoice in humane to-day. 

As early as 1665 Governor Nicholls an- 
nounced that a horse-race would take place 
at Hempstead, " not so much for the diver- 
tissement of youth as for encouraging the bet- 
tering of the breed of horses which through 
great neglect has been impaired." In 1669 
Governor Lovelace gave orders that a race 
should be run in May each year, and that 
subscriptions should be sent to Captain SaHs- 
bury, " of all such as are disposed to run for 
a crown in silver or the value thereof in 
wheat." This first course was a naturally 
218 



IN OLD NEW YORK 

level plain called Salisbury Plains, and was 
so named after this very Captain Silvester 
Salisbury, Commander of Royal Troops in 
the province, and an enthusiastic sportsman. 
Its location was near the present Hyde Park 
station of Long Island. 

Daniel Denton, one of the early settlers 
of Jamaica, Long Island, wrote in 1670 
thus : — 

"Towards the middle of Long Island lieth a 
plain sixteen miles long and four broad, upon 
which plain grows very fine grass that makes ex- 
ceeding good hayj where you shall find neither 
stick nor stone to hinder the horse-heels, or en- 
danger them in their races, and once a year the 
best horses in the island are brought hither to 
try their Swiftness and the swiftest rewarded with 
a silver Cup, two being Annually procured for 
the Purpose." 

The " fine grass " was what was known as 
secretary grass, and, curiously enough, this 
great plain was abandoned to this growth of 
secretary grass for more than a century after 
the settlement and cultivation of surrounding; 
farms; this was through a notion that the 
soil was too porous to be worth ploughing. 
Even a clergyman sent out by the Society for 
219 



COLONIAL DAYS 

the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign 
Parts testified to the beauty of Salisbury- 
Plain, calling it " an even delightsome plain, 
most sweet and pleasant." Delightsome it 
certainly proved to lovers of horse-racing. 

On February 24, 1721, a race was held on 
this plain which attracted much attention. 
The winning horse was owned by Samuel 
Bayard. The race was given by "the inhabi- 
tants of Queens County on Nassau Island." 
The name of the course had by this time 
been changed to Newmarket. In 1764 a 
new course was laid out; and in 1804 the 
racing moved to a field east of the Old Court 
House, and in 1821 it was transferred to the 
Union Course on the western border of 
Jamaica. The story of this course is familiar 
to sportsmen. 

Frequent newspaper notices call attention 
to the races held at this Hempstead New- 
market. From the " New York Postboy " of 
June 4, 1750, I quote: — 

" On Friday last there was a great horse race 
on Hempstead Plains which engaged the attention 
of so many of the city of New York that upwards 
of seventy chairs and chaises were carried over 
Brooklyn Ferry the day before, besides a far 
220 



IN OLD NEW YORK 

greater number of horses. The number of horses 
on the plains exceeded, it is thought, one 
thousand." 

In 1764 we find the Macaroni Club offer- 
ing prizes of ;^ioo and ^^50. At those races 
Mr. James De Lancey's bay horse Lath won. 
On September 28, 1769, the same horse Lath 
won a i^ioo race in Philadelphia. 

In October, 1770, Jacob Hiltzheimer, a well- 
known lover and breeder of horses in Phila- 
delphia, went to the races on Hempstead 
Plains, and lodged at a " public house " in 
Jamaica, with various other gentlemen, — 
lovers of races. Two purses of £$0 were 
given, but Mr. Hiltzheimer's chestnut horse 
Regulus did not win. 

A London racing-book of 1776 says of 
this Hempstead course : — 

"These plains were celebrated for their races 
throughout all the Colonies and even in England. 
They were held twice a year for a silver cup, to 
which the gentry of New England and New York 
resorted." 

Another famous race-course of colonial 
days was the one-mile course around Beaver 
Pond in Jamaica. This was laid out before 
221 



COLONIAL DAYS 

the year 1757, for on June 13 of that year 
a subscription plate was won by Lewis Mor- 
ris, Jr., with his horse American Childers. 
Another course was at Newtown in 1758, and 
another at New Lots in 1778. 

I find frequent allusions in the colonial press 
to the Beaver Pond course. The " New York 
Mercury" of 1763 tells of a" Free Masons' 
Purse " — for best two in three heats, each 
heat three times round Beaver Pond — free- 
masons were to be *' inspectors " of this 
race. 

At the time of the possession of Brooklyn 
and western Long Island by the British 
during the Revolutionary War, there con- 
stantly went on a succession of sporting 
events of all kinds under the direction of the 
English ofHcers and a notorious tavern- 
keeper Loosely, already named, who seemed 
to devote every energy to the amusement of 
the English invaders. An advertisement in 
** Rivington's Gazette" November 4, 1780, 
reads thus : — 

"By Permission Three Days' Sport on Ascot 

Heath formerly Flatlands Plain on Monday. 

I. The Noblemen's and Gentlemen's Purse of 

;£6q free for any horse except Mr. Wortman's 

222 



IN OLD NEW YORK 

and Mr. Allen's Dulcimore who won the plate at 
Beaver Pond last season. 2. A Saddle, bridle, 
and whip, worth ;£i^ for ponies not exceeding 
13 J hands. Tuesday. i. Ladies' Subscription 
Purse of ;^5o. 2. To be run for by women, a 
Holland smock and Chintz Gown full-trimmed; 
to run the two in three quarter-miles ; first to 
have the smock and gown of four guineas value ; 
second, a guinea; third half a guinea. Wed- 
nesday. Country Subscription Purse of ;^5o. No 
person will erect a booth or sell Hquor without 
subscribing 2 guineas to expenses of races. Gen- 
tlemen fond of fox-hunting will meet at Loosely's 
Kings Head Tavern at day break during the 
races. God Save the King played every hour." 

It will be seen by this advertisement that 
the rough and rollicking ways of English 
holidays were introduced in this woman's- 
race. The women who ran those quarter- 
miles must have been some camp-followers, 
for I am sure no honest Long Island country- 
girls would have taken part. At other races 
on this freshly named "Ascot Heath" hurl- 
ing-matches and bull-baitings and lotteries 
added their zest, and on April 27, 1782, 
there was a three hundred guineas sweep- 
stakes race. These races were held at short 
intervals until October, 1783, when English 
223 



COLONIAL DAYS 

sports and English cruelties no longer held 
sway on Long Island. 

At these races, given under martial rule, 
some rather crooked proceedings were taken 
to recruit the field and keep up the interest ; 
and good horses for many miles around were 
watched carefully by their owners ; and when 
a gentleman attending the races viewed with 
surprised and indignant recognition his own 
horse which had been stolen from him, he 
promptly applied for restitution to Mr. Cor- 
nell, of Brooklyn, who had entered the horse; 
and when the race was finished, the horse was 
returned to its rightful owner. 

Other localities developed race-courses. 
"At Captain Tim Cornell's Poles, on Hemp- 
stead Plains," Eclipse and Sturdy Beggar 
ran for "Fifty Joes " on March 14, 1781. In 
1783 Eclipse and Young Slow and Easy ran 
for a purse of two hundred guineas. At Far 
Rockaway, in 1786, Jacob Hicks, "from a 
wish to gratify sportsmen," laid out a mile 
course and offered prizes where no " trussing, 
jostling, or foul play were countenanced; if 
detected, the rider will be pronounced 
distanced." 

On Manhattan Island were several other 
224 



IN OLD NEW YORK 

race-courses. In 1742, a race was run on 
the Church Farm, just a stone's throw north- 
west of where the Astor House now stands. 
I have seen many notices of races on this 
Church Farm which was the valuable Trinity 
Church property. In October, 1726, a Sub- 
scription Plate of twenty pounds was run for 
"on the Course at New York." The horses 
were entered with Francis Child on Fresh 
Water Hill. Entrance fee was half a pis- 
tole. Admission to the public, sixpence each. 
In the 1750 October runs, Mr. Lewis Morris, 
Jr.'s horse won on the Church Farm course. 
The chief racing stables in the province of 
New York were those of Mr. Morris and of 
Mr. James De Lancey. The former won a 
reputation with American Childers; the 
latter with his imported horse Lath. The 
De Lancey stables were the most costly ones 
in the north ; their colors were seen on every 
course for ten years previous to the Revolu- 
tion, and they were patrons of all English 
sports. A famous horse of James De Lan- 
cey' s was True Briton. It is told of this 
horse that Oliver De Lancey would jump 
him back and forth from a standstill over 
a five-barred gate. There was a course at 
15 225 



COLONIAL DAYS 

Greenwich Village on the estate of Sir 
Peter Warren, and one at Harlem, another 
at Newburgh. 

Many advertisements of other races with 
names of horses and owners might be added 
to this list ; but I think I have given a suffi- 
cient number to disprove the vague assertions 
of Frank Forester and other writers of the 
history of the horse in America, that little 
attention was paid to horse-raising in the 
northern provinces, and that there were a few 
races on Long Island previous to the Revo- 
lution, but it is not known whether taking 
place regularly, or for given prizes. There 
was no racing-calendar in America till 1829, 
but there are other ways of learning of 
races. 



226 



IN OLD NEW YORK 



CHAPTER XII 

CRIMES AND PUNISHMENTS 

The court records of any period in our 
American history are an unfailing source of 
profit and delight to the historian. In the 
town or state whose colonial records still 
exist there can ever be drawn a picture not 
only of the crimes and punishments, but of 
the manners, occupations, and ways of our 
ancestors and a knowledge can be gained of 
the social ethics, the morality, the modes of 
thought, the intelligence of dead-and-gone 
citizens. We learn that they had daily 
hopes and plans and interests and harass- 
ments just such as our own, as well as vices 
and wickedness. 

In spite of Chancellor Kent's assertion of 
their dulness and lack of interest, the court 
records of Dutch colonial times are not to 
me dull reading: quaint humor and curious 
terms abound; the criminal records always 
227 



COLONIAL DAYS 

are interesting; even the old reken-hoeks 
(the account-books) are of value. These 
first sources give an unbiassed and well- 
outlined picture, sometimes a surprising and 
almost irreconcilable one; for instance, I 
had always a fixed notion that the early 
women-colonists of Dutch birth were wholly 
a quiet, reserved, even timid group; not 
talkative and never aggressive. It was there- 
fore a great thrust at my established ideas to 
discover, when poring over an old "Road 
Book " at the Hall of Records in Brooklyn, 
containing some entries of an early Court of 
Sessions, an account of the trial of two dames 
of Bushwyck, Mistress Jonica Schampf and 
Widow Rachel Luquer, for assaulting the 
captain of the Train- Band, Captain Peter 
Praa, on training-day in October, 1690, 
while he was at the head of his company. 
These two vixens most despitefully used him ; 
they beat him, pulled his hair, assaulted and 
wounded him, and committed "other Ivill 
Inormities, so that his life was despaired of." 
And there was no evidence to show that any 
of his soldiers, or any of the spectators pres- 
ent, interfered to save either Peter's life or 
his honor. The offence which provoked this 
228 



IN OLD NEW YORK 

assault is not even hinted at, though it may 
have arisen from the troubled state of public 
affairs. Captain Praa was a man of influence 
and dignity in the community, an exiled 
Huguenot, of remarkable skill in horseman- 
ship and arms. In spite of all this, it appears 
probable that the sentiment of the community 
was in sympathy with the two turbulent 
assaulters and batterers, for they were fined 
only six shillings and three pounds respec- 
tively. They threw themselves on the mercy 
of the Court, and certainly were treated with 
mercy. 

There are, however, few women-criminals 
named in the old Dutch and early English 
records, and these few were not prosecuted 
for any very great crimes or viciousness ; the 
chief number were brought up for defama- 
tion of character and slander, though men- 
slanderers were more plentiful than women. 
The close intimacy, the ideal neighborliness 
of the Dutch communities of New York made 
the settlers deeply abhor all violations of 
the law of social kindness. To preserve this 
state of amity, they believed with Chaucer 
"the first vertue is to restraine and kepen 
wel thine tonge." 

229 



COLONIAL DAYS 

The magistrates knew how vast a flame 
might be kindled by a petty spark; and there- 
fore promptly quenched the odious slander in 
its beginning; petty quarrels were adjusted by 
arbitration ere they grew to great breaches. 
As sung the chorus of Batavian women in 
Van der Vondel's great poem : — 

" If e'er dispute or discord dared intrude, 
'T was soon by wisdom's voice subdued." 

In spite, hovv^ever, of all wariness and 
watchfulness and patience, the inevitable 
fretfulness engendered in petty natures by 
a narrow and confined life showed in neigh- 
borhood disputes and suits for defamation 
of character, few of them of great seriousness 
and most of them easily adjusted by the 
phlegmatic and somewhat dictatorial Dutch 
magistrates. In a community so given to 
nicknaming it seems strange to find such 
extreme touchiness about being called names. 
Suits for defamation were frequent, through 
opprobrious name-calling, and on very slight 
though irritating grounds. It would cer- 
tainly seem a rather disproportionate amount 
of trouble to bring a lawsuit simply because 
you were called a "black pudding," or a 
230 



IN OLD NEW YORK 

verklickker, or tale-bearer, or even a "Turk;" 
though, of course, no one would stand being 
called a "horned beast" or a "hay thief." 
Nor was "Thou swine" an offensive term 
too petty to be passed over in silence. The 
terrible epithets, spitter-baard and "Dutch 
dough-face," seem to make a climax of oppro- 
briousness; but the word moff was worse, 
for it was the despised term applied in Hol- 
land to the Germans, and it led to a quarrel 
with knives. 

I wish to note in passing that though the 
Dutch called each other these disagreeable 
and even degrading names, they did not 
swear at each other. Profanity was seldom 
punished in New Amsterdam, for practically 
it did not exist, as was remarked by travel- 
lers. Chaplain Wolley told of "the usual 
oath " of one Dutch colonist, — the word 
"sacrament." 

The colonists were impatient of insulting 
actions as well as words. Sampson said in 
"Romeo and Juliet," "I will bite my thumb 
at them, which is a disgrace to them if they 
bear it; " so " finger-sticking " was a disgrace 
in colonial times if 7mreseiited, and it was 
actionable in the courts. The man or woman 
231 



COLONIAL DAYS 

who pointed the finger of scorn at a neighbor 
was pretty sure to have the finger of the law 
pointed at him. 

The curious practice of the Dutch settlers 
alluded to — the giving of nicknames — may 
be partly explained by the fact that in some 
cases the persons named had no surname, and 
the nickname was really a distinguishing 
name. These nicknames appear not only in 
the records of criminal cases, but in official 
documents such as the patents for towns, 
transfers of estates, civil contracts, etc. In 
Albany, in 1655 and 1657, we find Jan the 
Jester, Huybert the Rogue, Jacobus or Cobus 
the Looper, squint-eyed Harmen, the wicked 
Domine. On Long Island were John the 
Swede, Hans the Boor, Tunis the Fisher. 
In Harlem was Jan Archer the Koop-all (or 
buy-all). In New York, in English days, in 
1691, we find Long Mary, Old Bush, Top- 
knot Betty, Scarebouch. These names con- 
veyed no offence, and seem to have been uni- 
versally adopted and responded to. 

It would appear to a casual observer glan- 
cing over the court-records of those early 
years of New York life under Dutch suprem- 
acy, that the greater number of the cases 
232 



IN OLD NEW YORK 

brought before the magistrates were these 
slander and libel cases. We could believe 
that no other court-room ever rang with such 
petty personal suits; to use Tennyson's 
words, "it bubbled o'er with gossip and 
scandal and spite." But in truth slander was 
severely punished in all the colonies, in New 
England, Virginia, Pennsylvania; and it is 
not to the detriment of the citizens of New 
Netherland that they were more sharp in the 
punishment of such offences, for it is well 
known, as Swift says, that the worthiest 
people are those most injured by slander. 

The slander cases of colonial times seem 
most trivial and even absurd when seen 
through the mist of years. They could scarce 
reach the dignity of Piers Plowman's defini- 
tion of slanders : — 

" To bakbyten, and to bosten, and to here fals wit- 
nesse 
To scornie and to scolde, sclaundres to make." 

To show their character, let me give those 
recorded in which Thomas Applegate of 
Gravesend, Long Island, took an accused 
part. In 1650, he was brought up before the 
Gravesend court for saying of a fellow-towns- 
man that " he thought if his debts were paid 
233 



COLONIAL DAYS 

he would have little left." For this incau- 
tious but not very heinous speech he paid a 
fine of forty guilders. The next year we find 
him prosecuted for saying of a neighbor 
that *' he had not half a wife. " Though he at 
first denied this speech, he was ordered "to 
make publick acknowledgement of error; to 
stand at the publick post with a paper on his 
breast mentioning the reason, that he is a 
notorious, scandalous person." This brought 
him to his senses, and he confessed his guilt, 
desired the slandered " half a wife " to " pass 
it by and remit it, which she freely did and 
he gave her thanks." Next Mistress Apple- 
gate was brought up for saying that a neigh- 
bor's wife milked the Applegate cows. She 
escaped punishment by proving that Penelope 
Prince told her so. As a climax, Thomas 
Applegate said to a friend that he believed 
that the Governor took bribes. The schotct 
in his decision on this grave offence said 
Applegate ''did deserve to have his tongue 
bored through v/ith a hot iron ; " but this 
fierce punishment was not awarded him, nor 
was he banished. 

When the tailor of New Amsterdam said 
disrespectful words of the Governor, his sen- 
234 



IN OLD NEW YORK 

tence was that he "stand before the Gov- 
ernor's door with uncovered hea,d, after the 
ringing of the bell, and to declare that he 
falsely and scandalously issued such words 
and then to ask God's pardon." 

The magistrates were very touchy of their 
dignity. Poor Widow Piertje Jans had her 
house sold on an execution ; and, exasperated 
by the proceeding, and apparently also at the 
price obtained, she said bitterly to the 
officers, " Ye despoilers, ye bloodsuckers, ye 
have not sold but given away my house." 
Instead of treating these as the heated words 
of a disappointed and unhappy woman, the 
officers promptly ran tattling to the Stadt 
Huys and whiningly complained to the Court 
that her words were " a sting which could not 
be endured." Piertje was in turn called 
shameful; her words were termed "foul, 
villanous, injurious, nay, infamous words," 
and also called a blasphemy, insult, affront, 
and reproach. She was accused of insulting, 
defaming, affronting, and reproaching the 
Court, and that she was in the highest degree 
reprim.anded, particularly corrected, and 
severely punished; and after being forbidden 
to indulge in any more such blasphemies, 
235 



COLONIAL DAYS 

she was released, — '* bethumped with words," 
as Shakespeare said, — doubtless well scared at 
the enormity of her offence, as well as at the 
enormity of the magistrate's phraseology. 

The notary Walewyn van der Veen was 
frequently in trouble, usually for contempt 
of court. And I doubt not "the little bench 
of justices " was sometimes rather trying in 
its ways to a notary who knew anything about 
law. On one occasion, when a case relating 
to a bill of exchange had been decided against 
him. Van der Veen spoke of their High 
Mightinesses the magistrates as " simpletons 
and blockheads." This was the scathing 
sentence of his punishment: — 

•*That Walewyn Van der Veen, for his com- 
mitted insult, shall here beg forgiveness, with un- 
covered head, of God, Justice, and the Worshipful 
Court, and moreover pay as a fine 190 guilders." 

This fine must have consumed all his fees for 
many a weary month thereafter, if we can 
judge by the meagre lawyers' bills which 
have come down to us. 

Another time the contumacious Van der 
Veen called the Secretary a rascal. Thereat, 
the latter, much aggrieved, demanded " hon- 
236 



IN OLD NEW YORK 

orable and profitable reparation " for the in- 
sult. The sellout judged this epithet to be 
a slander and an affront to the Secretary, 
which "affected his honor, being tender," 
and the honor of the Court as well, since it 
was to a member of the Court, and he de- 
manded that the notary should pay a fine of 
fifty guilders as an example to other slan- 
derers, "who for trifles have constantly in 
their mouths curses and abuses of other hon- 
orable people." 

Another well-known notary and practi- 
tioner and pleader in the busy little Court 
held in the Stadt Huys was Solomon La 
Chair. His manuscript volume of nearly 
three hundred pages, containing detailed ac- 
counts of all the business he transacted in 
Manhattan, is now in the County Clerk's 
Office in New York, and proves valuable 
material for the historiographer. He had 
much business, for he could speak and write 
both English and Dutch; and he was a faith- 
ful, painstaking, intelligent worker. He not 
only conducted lawsuits for others, but he 
seems to have been in constant legal hot 
water himself on his own account. He was 
sued for drinking and not paying for a can 
237 



COLONIAL DAYS 

of sugared wine ; and also for a half-aam of 
costly French wine ; and he was sued for the 
balance of payment for a house he had pur- 
chased ; he pleaded for more time, and with 
the ingenuous guilelessness peculiar to the 
law said in explanation that he had had the 
money gathered at one time for payment, 
but it had somehow dropped through his 
fingers. " The Court condemned to pay at 
once," — not being taken in by any such 
simplicity as that. He had to pay a fine of 
twelve guilders for affronting both fire in- 
spector and court messenger. He first in- 
sulted the bra7idt-77ieester who came to inspect 
his chimney, and was fined, then he called 
the bode who came to collect the fine " a little 
cock booted and spurred." The Court in 
sentence said with dignity, ** It is not meet 
that men should mock and scoff at persons 
appointed to any office, yea a necessary 
office." 

He won one important suit for the town of 
Gravesend, by which the right of that town to 
the entire region of Coney Island was estab- 
lished ; and he received in payment for his 
legal services therein, the munificent sum of 
tv/enty-four florins (ten dollars) paid in gray 
238 



IN OLD NEW YORK 

pease. He kept a tavern and was complained 
of for tapping after nine o'clock; and he was 
sued by his landlord for rent; and he had a 
yacht, " The Pear Tree," which ran on trading 
trips to Albany, and there were two or three 
lawsuits in regard to that. He was also a 
farmer of the excise on slaughtered cattle; 
but, in spite of all his energy and variety of 
employment, he died insolvent in 1664. The 
last lawsuit in which Lawyer Solomon had 
any share was through a posthumous connec- 
tion, — the burgher who furnished an anker 
of French wine for the notary's funeral 
claimed a position as preferred creditor to 
the estate. 

A very aggravated case of scorn and re- 
sistance of authority was that of Abel Har- 
denbrock against the schout de Mill. And 
this case shows equally the popular horror 
of violations of the law and the confiding 
trust of the justices that the word of the law 
was enough without any visible restraining 
force. Hardenbrock, who was a troublesome 
fellow, had behaved most vilely, shoving the 
schout on the breast, and wickedly " wishing 
the devil might break his neck," simply be- 
cause the schotit went to Hardenbrock's 
239 



COLONIAL DAYS 

house to warn his wife not to annoy further 
Burgomaster De Peyster by unwelcome visits. 
Hardenbrock was accordingly seized and 
made a prisoner at the Stadt Huys " in the 
chamber of Pieter Schaefbanck^ where he 
carried on and made a racket like one pos- 
sessed and mad, notwithstanding the efforts 
of Heer Burgomaster Van Brught, running 
up to the Court room and going away next 
morning as if he had not been imprisoned." 
It was said with amusing simplicity that this 
cool walking out of prison was ** contrary to 
the customs of the law," and a fine of twenty- 
five florins was imposed. 

For serious words against the government, 
which could be regarded as treasonable, the 
decreed punishment was death. One Claer- 
bout van ter Goes used such words (unfor- 
tunately they are not given in the indict- 
ment), and a judgment was recorded from 
each burgomaster and schepen as to what 
punishment would be proper. He was 
branded, whipped on a half-gallows, and 
banished, and escaped hanging only by one 
vote. 

All classes in the community were parties 
in these petty slander suits; schoolmasters 
240 



IN OLD NEW YORK 

and parsons appear to have been specially 
active. Domine Bogardus and Domine 
Schaets had many a slander suit. The most 
famous and amusing of all these clerical suits 
is the one brought by Domine Bogardus and 
his wife, the posthumously famous Anneke 
Jans, against Grietje von Salee, a woman of 
very dingy reputation, who told in New Am- 
sterdam that the domine's wife. Mistress 
Anneke, had lifted her petticoats in unseemly 
and extreme fashion when crossing a muddy 
street. This was proved to be false, and the 
evidence adduced was so destructive of 
Grietje's character that she stands disgraced 
forever in history as the worst woman in 
New Netherland. 

Not only were slanderers punished, but 
they were disgraced with terrible names. Wil- 
liam Bakker was called " a blasphemer, a 
street schold, a murderer as far as his inten- 
tions are concerned, a defamer, a disturber 
of pubhc peace," — the concentration of 
which must have made William Bakker hang 
his head in the place of his banishment. 
They were also rebuked from the pulpit, and 
admonished in private. 

Perhaps the best rebuke given, as well as a 
i6 241 



COLONIAL DAYS 

unique one, was the one adopted by Domine 
Frelinghuysen, who had suffered somewhat 
from slander himself. He had this rhyme 
painted in large letters on the back of his 
sleigh, that he who followed might read : — 

" Niemands long ; nog neimands pen, 
Maakt my anders dan ik ben. 
Spreek quaad-spreekers : spreek vonder end, 
Niemand en word van u geschend." 

Which, translated into English, reads : — 

" No one's tongue, and no one's pen 
Makes me other than I am. 
Speak, evil-speakers, speak without end, 
No one heeds a word you say." 

The original Court of the colony was com- 
posed of a Director and his Council. In 
1656, in answer to complaints from the colo- 
nists, the States-General ordered the election 
of a board of magistrates, in name and func- 
tion like those of the Fatherland; namely, 
a schoiit, two burgomasters, and five schepens. 
The duties of the burgomasters and schepens 
were twofold : they regulated m^unicipal affairs 
like a board of aldermen, and they sat as 
a court of justice both in civil and crimi- 
nal cases. The annual salary of a burgo- 
master was fixed at one hundred and forty 
242 



IN OLD NEW YORK 

dollars, and of a schepen at one hundred 
dollars; but as these salaries were to come 
out of the municipal chest, which was chron- 
ically empty, they never were paid. When 
funds did come in from the excise on taverns, 
on slaughtered cattle, the tax on land, the 
fees on transfers, etc., it always had to be 
paid out in other ways, — for repairs for the 
school-room, the Graft, the watch-room, the 
Stadt Huys. It never entered the minds of 
those guileless civic rulers, two centuries ago, 
to pay themselves and let the other creditors 
go without. The early city schout was also 
schoiit-fiskaal till 1660; but the proper 
duties of this functionary were really a com- 
bination of those pertaining now to the 
mayor, sheriff, and district-attorney. In the 
little town one man could readily perform all 
these duties. He also presided in Court. An 
offender could thus be arrested, prosecuted, 
and judged, by one and the same person, 
v/hich seems to us scarcely judicious; but 
the bench of magistrates had one useful 
power, that of mitigating and altering the 
sentence demanded by the schotct. Often a 
fine of one hundred guilders would be re- 
duced to twenty-five; often the order for 
243 



COLONIAL DAYS 

whipping would be set aside, and the com- 
mand of branding as well. 

Sometimes justice in New York was tem- 
pered with mercy, and sorely it needed it 
when fierce English rule and law came in 
force. Felons were few, but these few were 
severely punished. A record of a trial in 
1676 reveals a curious scene in Court, as well 
as an astonishing celerity in the execution of 
the law under EngHsh rule and in the English 
army. Three soldiers stole a couple of iron 
pots, two hoes, a pair of shears, and half a 
firkin of soap. They were tried in the morn- 
ing, confessed, cast into *' the Hole " in the 
afternoon, and in the evening " the Governor 
ordered some persons to go to the prisoners 
and advise them to prepare for another world, 
for that one of them should dye the next 
day." On the gloomy morrow, on Saturday, 
the three terror-stricken souls drew lots, and 
the fatal lot fell to one Thomas Weale. The 
court of aldermen interceded for him and 
finally secured his reprieve till Monday. The 
peaceful Dutch Sunday, darkened and shocked 
by this impending death, saw a strange and 
touching sight. 



244 



IN OLD NEW YORK 

*^ In the evening a company of the chiefe women 
of the City, both EngUsh and Dutch, made earnest 
suite to the Governor for the Condemned man's 
life. Monday in the morning the same women 
who came the last night with many others of the 
better sort, and a greater number of the ordinary 
Dutch women, did again very much importune the 
Governor to spare him." 

These tender-hearted colonists were in- 
dorsed and supplemented by the petition of 
Weale's fellow-soldiers in the garrison, who 
pleaded the prisoner's youth and his past 
usefulness, and who promised if he were 
pardoned never to steal nor to conceal theft. 
As a result of all this intercession, the Gov- 
ernor '* graciously " granted pardon. 

This promise and pardon seem to have 
accomplished much in army discipline, for 
thereafter arrests for crime among the soldiery 
were rare. Five years later a soldier was 
accused of pilfering. 

'' The Court Marshall doth adjudge that the said 
Melchoir Classen shall run the Gantlope once, the 
length of the fort : where according to the cus- 
tome of that punishment, the souldiers shall have 
switches delivered to them, with which they shall 
strike him as he passes between them stript to the 
245 



COLONIAL DAYS 

waist, and at the Fort-gate the Marshall is to re- 
ceive him, and there to kick him out of the Garri- 
son as a cashiered person, when he is no more to 
returne, and if any pay is due him it' is to be 
forfeited." 

And that was the end of Melchoir Classen. 

Gantlope was the earlier and more correct 
form of the word now commonly called gant- 
let. Running the gantlope was a military 
punishment in universal use. 

Another common punishment for soldiers 
(usually for rioting or drinking) was riding 
the wooden horse. In New Amsterdam the 
wooden horse stood between Paerel Street 
and the Fort, and was twelve feet high. Gar- 
ret Segersen, for stealing chickens, rode the 
wooden horse for three days from two o'clock 
to close of parade with a fifty-pound weight 
tied to each foot. At other times a musket 
was tied to each foot of the disgraced man. 
One culprit rode with an empty scabbard in 
one hand and a pitcher in the other to show 
his inordinate love for John Barleycorn. Jan 
Alleman, a Dutch officer, challenged Jan de 
Fries, who was bedridden ; for this cruel and 
meaningless insult he too rode the wooden 
horse. In Revolutionary days we still find 
246 



IN OLD NEW YORK 

the soldiers of the Continental Army pun- 
ished by riding the wooden horse, or, as it 
was sometimes called, ''the timber mare;" 
but it was probably a modification of the cruel 
punishment of the seventeenth century. 

A sailor, for drawing a knife on a com- 
panion, was dropped three times from the 
yard-arm and received a kick from every 
sailor on the ship, — a form of running the 
gantlope. And we read of a woman who 
enlisted as a seaman, and whose sex was 
detected, being dropped three times from 
the yard-arm and tarred and feathered. 

These women petitioners for Soldier Weale 
of whom I have told, were not the only 
tender-hearted New Yorkers to petition for 
" mercy, that herb of grace, to flower," 
During Stuyvesant's rule his sister. Madam 
Bayard, successfully interceded for the re- 
lease, and thereby saved the Hfe, of an impris- 
oned Quaker; and in September, 1713, two 
counterfeiters were saved from the death pen- 
alty by the intervention of New York dames. 
We read " Most of the gentlewomen of the 
city waited on the Governor, and addressed 
him earnestly with prayers and tears for the 
lives of the culprits, who were accordingly 
247 



COLONIAL DAYS 

pardoned." When two sailors rioted through 
the town demanding food and drink, and used 
Carel Van Brugh so roughly that his face was 
cut, they were sentenced to be fastened to 
the whipping-post, and scourged, and have 
gashes cut in their faces ; the wife of Van 
Brugh and her friends petitioned that the 
sentence should not be carried out, or at any 
rate executed within a room. Doubtless other 
examples could be found. 

The laws of New Netherland were natu- 
rally based upon the laws and customs of 
the Fatherland, which in turn were formed 
by the rules of the College of XIX. from 
the Imperial Statutes of Charles V. and the 
Roman civil law. 

The punishments were the ordinary ones 
of the times, neither more nor less severe than 
those of the Fatherland or the other colo- 
nies. In 169 1 it was ordered that a ducking- 
stool be erected in New York on the wharf 
in front of the City Hall. The following 
year an order was passed that a pillory, cage, 
and ducking-stool be built. Though scolds 
were punished, I have never seen any sen- 
tence to show that this ducking-stool was 
ever built, or that one was ever used in New 
248 



IN OLD NEW YORK 

York ; while instances of the use of a duck- 
ing-stool are comparatively plentiful in the 
Southern colonies. The ducking-stool was 
an English " engine " of punishment, not a 
Dutch. 

The colonists were astonishingly honest. 
Thieves were surprisingly few; they were 
punished under Dutch rule by scourging with 
rods, and usually by banishment, — a very 
convenient way of shifting responsibility. 
Assaults were punished by imprisonment and 
subjection to prison fare, consisting only of 
bread and water or small beer; and some- 
times temporary banishment. There was at 
first no prison, so men were often imprisoned 
in their own houses, which does not seem 
very disgraceful. In the case of Frangois de 
Bruyn, tried for insulting and striking the 
court messenger, he was fined two hundred 
guilders, and answered that he would rot in 
prison before he would pay. He was then 
ordered to be imprisoned in a respectable 
tavern^ which sentence seems to have some 
possibility of mitigating accompaniments. 

In 1692 it was ordered in Kings County 
that a good pair of stocks and a pound be 
made in every bound within Kings County, 
249 



COLONIAL DAYS 

and kept in sufficient repair. In repair and 
in use were they kept till this century. Pil- 
lories too were employed in punishment till 
within the memory of persons now living. 
The whipping-post was really a public bless- 
ing, — in constant use, and apparently of con- 
stant benefit, though the publicity of its em- 
ployment seems shocking to us to-day. The 
public whipper received a large salary. In 
1 75 1, we learn from an advertisement, it was 
twenty pounds annually. 

Some of the punishments were really 
almost picturesque in their ingenious inven- 
tions of mortification and degradation. Truly 
it was a striking sight when "Jan of Leyden " 
— a foul-mouthed rogue, a true blather- 
schuyten — was fastened to a stake in front of 
the townhouse, v/ith a bridle in his mouth 
and a bundle of rods tied under each arm, 
and a placard on his breast bearing the 
inscription, " Lampoon-riter, false accuser, 
defamer of magistrates." Though he was 
banished, I am sure he never was forgotten 
by the children who saw him standing thus 
garnished and branded on that spring day 
in 1664. In the same place a thief was pun- 
ished by being forced to stand all day under 
250 



IN OLD NEW YORK 

a gallows, a gallows-rope around his neck and 
empty sword-scabbard in his hand, a memo- 
rable figure. 

And could any who saw it ever forget the 
punishment of Mesaack Martens, who stole 
six cabbages from his neighbor, and con- 
fessed and stood for days in the pillory with 
cabbages on his head, that ** the punishment 
might fit the crime ; " to us also memorable 
because the prisoner was bootlessly examined 
by tortiire\.o force confession of stealing fowls, 
butter, turkeys, etc. 

He was not the only poor creature who 
suffered torture in New Amsterdam. It was 
frequently threatened and several times exe- 
cuted. The mate of a ship was accused of 
assaulting a sheriff's officer, who could not 
identify positively his assailant. The poor 
mate was put to torture, and Jie was innocent 
of the offence. The assailant was proved to 
be another man from whom the officer had 
seized a keg of brandy. Still none in New 
Amsterdam were tortured or pressed to 
death. The blood of no Giles Corey stains 
the honor of New Netherland. 

Sometimes the execution of justice seemed 
to "■ set a thief to catch a thief" A letter 
251 



COLONIAL DAYS 

written by an English officer from Fort James 
on Manhattan Island to Captain Silvester 
Salisbury in Fort Albany in 1672 contains 
this sentence : — 

"We had like to have lost our Hang-man Ben 
Johnson, for he being taken in Divers Thefts and 
Robbings convicted and found guilty, escaped his 
neck through want of another Hangman to truss 
him up, soe that all the punishment that he received 
for his Three Years' Roguery in thieving and steal- 
ing (which was never found out till now) was only 
39 stripes at the Whipping Post, loss of an Ear and 
Banishment." 

We have the records of an attempt at capital 
punishment in 1641 ; and Mr. Gerard's account 
of it in his paper " The Old Stadt-Huys " is 
so graphic, I v^ish to give it in full : — 

"The court proceedings before the Council, 
urged by the Fiscal, were against Jan of Fort 
Orange, Manuel Gerrit the Giant, Anthony Portu- 
gese, Simon Congo, and five others, all negroes 
belonging to the Company, for killing Jan Premero, 
another negro. The prisoners having pleaded 
guilty, and it being rather a costly operation to 
hang nine able-bodied negroes belonging to the 
Company, the sentence was that they were to draw 
lots to determine 'who should be punished with 
the cord until death, praying the Almighty God, 
252 



IN OLD NEW YORK 

the Creator of Heaven and Earth, to direct that the 
lot may fall on the guiltiest, whereupon ' the record 
reads, ' the lot fell by God's Providence on Manuel 
Gerrit, the Giant, who was accordingly sentenced 
to be hanged by the neck until dead as an example 
to all such malefactors.' Four days after the trial, 
and on the day of the sentence, all Nieuw Anisier- 
dam left its accustomed work to gaze on the un- 
wonted spectacle. Various Indians also gathered, 
wondering, to the scene. The giant negro is 
brought out by the black hangman, and placed 
on the ladder against the fort with two strong hal- 
ters around his neck. After an exhortation from 
Domine Bogardus during which the negro chaunts 
barbaric invocations to his favorite Fetich, he is 
duly turned off the ladder into the air. Under the 
violent struggles and weight of the giant, however, 
both halters break. He falls to the ground. He 
utters piteous cries. Now on his knees, now twist- 
ing and groveling on the earth. The women shriek. 
The men join in his prayers for mercy to the stern 
Director. He is no trifler and the law must have 
its course. The hangman prepares a stronger rope. 
Finally the cry for mercy is so general that the Di- 
rector relents, and the fortunate giant is led oif the 
ground by his swarthy friends, somewhat disturbed 
in his intellect by his near view of the grim King of 
Terrors." 

Up to February 21, 1788, benefit of clergy 
existed ; that is, the plea in capital felonies of 
253 



COLONIAL DAYS 

being able to read. This was a monkish 
privilege first extended only to priestly per- 
sons. In England it was not abolished till 
1827. The minutes of the Court of General 
Quarter Sessions in New York bear records 
of criminals who pleaded " the benefit " and 
were branded on the brawn of the left 
thumb with *'T" in open court and then 
discharged. 

As the punishments accorded for crimes 
were not severe for the notions of the times, 
it is almost amusing to read some fierce 
ordinances, — though there is no record of 
any executions in accordance with them. 
For instance, in January, 1659, ^7 ^^^^ 
Director-General and Council with the advice 
of the burgomasters and schepens it was 
enacted that " No person shall strip the 
fences of posts or rails under penalty for the 
first offence of being whipped and branded, 
and for the second, of punishment with the 
cord until death ensues." It is really as- 
tonishing to think of these kindly Dutch 
gentlemen calmly ordering hanging for steal- 
ing fence-rails, though of course the matter 
reached further than at first appeared : there 
was danger of a scarcity of grain ; and if the 
254 



IN OLD NEW YORK 

fences were stolen, the cattle would trample 
down and destroy the grain. Later orders as 
to fences were given which appear eminently 
calculated to be mischief-making. " Persons 
thinking their neighbors' fences not good, 
first to request them to repair ; failing which 
to report to the overseers." In 1674 all 
persons were forbidden to leave the city 
except by city-gate, under penalty of death ; 
this was of course v/hen war threatened. 

The crime of suicide was not without 
punishment. Suicides were denied ordinary 
burial rites. In Dutch days when one Smitt 
of New York committed suicide, the schout 
asked that his body be drawn on a hurdle 
and buried with a stake in his heart. This 
order was not executed ; he was buried at 
night and his estates confiscated. When Sir 
Danvers Osborne — the Governor for a day — 
was found dead by his own act, he was 
" decently interred in Trinity churchyard." 

Women in New York sometimes made 
their appearance in New York courts, as in 
those of other colonies, in another role than 
that of witness or criminal ; they sometimes 
sat on juries. In the year 1701, six good 
Albany wives served on a jury: Tryntje 
25s 



COLONIAL DAYS 

Roseboom, Catheren Gysbertse, Angeneutt 
Jacobse, Marritje Dirkse, Elsje Lansing, and 
Susanna Bratt. They were, of course, em- 
panelled for a special duty, not to serve on 
the entire evidence of the case for which they 
were engaged. 

Many old records are found which employ 
quaint metaphors or legal expressions ; I 
give one which refers to a custom which 
seems at one time to have been literally 
performed. It occurs in a commission 
granted to the trustees of an estate of which 
the debts exceeded the assets. Any widow 
in Holland or New Netherland could be re- 
lieved of all demands or claims of her hus- 
band's creditors by relinquishing all right 
of inheritance. This widow took this privi- 
lege ; it is recorded thus : — 

" Whereas, Harman Jacobsen Bamboes has been 
lately shot dead, murdered by the Indians, and 
whereas the estate left by him has been kicked 
away with the foot by his wife who has laid the 
key on the coffin, it is therefore necessary to au- 
thorize and quahfy some persons to regulate the 
same." 

There was a well-known Dutch saying 
which referred to this privilege, Den Sleutel 
256 



IN OLD NEW YORK 

op het graf leggen, and simply meant not to 
pay the debts of the deceased. 

This legal term and custom is of ancient 
origin. In Davies' '* History of Holland " we 
read of a similar form being gone through 
with in Holland in 1404, according to the 
law of Rhynland. The widow of a great 
nobleman immediately after his death de- 
sired to renounce all claim on his estate and 
responsibility for his debts. She chose a 
guardian, and, advancing with him to the 
door of the Court (where the body of the 
dead Count had been placed on a bier), an- 
nounced that she was dressed wholly in 
borrowed clothing; she then formally gave 
a straw to her guardian, who threw it on the 
dead body, saying he renounced for her all 
right of dower, and abjured all debts. This 
was derived from a still more ancient custom of 
the Franks, who renounced all alliances by the 
symbolic breaking and throwing av/ay a straw. 

In other states of the Netherlands the 
widow gave up dower and debts by laying a 
key and purse on the coffin. This immunity 
was claimed by persons in high rank, one be- 
ing the widow of the Count of Flanders. 

In New England (as I have told at length 
17 257 



COLONIAL DAYS 

in my book, " Customs and Fashions in Old 
New England," the widow who wished to 
renounce her husband's debts was married 
in her shift, often at the cross-roads, at mid- 
night. These shift-marriages took place in 
Massachusetts as late as 1836; I have a copy 
of a court record of that date. 

I know of but one instance of the odious 
and degrading English custom of wife-trading 
taking place in New York. Laurens Duyts, 
an agent for Anneke Jans in some of her 
business transactions, was in the year 1663 
sentenced to be flogged and have his right 
ear cut off for selling his wife, Mistress Duyts, 
to one Jansen. Possibly the severity of the 
punishment ^ may have prevented the recur- 
rence of the crime. 

After a somewhat extended study and com- 
parison of the early court and church records 
of New England with those of New York, I 
cannot fail to draw the conclusion — if it is 
just to judge from such comparisons — that 
the state of social morals was higher in the 
Dutch colonies than in the English. Perhaps 
the settlers of Boston and Plymouth were 
m.ore severe towards suspicion of immorality, 
as they were infinitely more severe towards 
258 



IN OLD NEW YORK 

suspicion of irreligion, than were their Dutch 
neighbors. And they may have given more 
publicity and punishment to deviations from 
the path of rectitude and uprightness; but 
certainly from their own records no fair- 
minded person can fail to deem them more 
frail, more erring, more wicked, than the 
Dutch. The circumstances of immigration 
and the tendencies of temperament were di- 
verse, and perhaps it was natural that a reac- 
tion tending to sin and vice should come 
to the intense and overwrought religionist 
rather than to the phlegmatic and prosper- 
ous trader. In Virginia and Maryland the 
presence of many convict-emigrants would 
form a reasonable basis for the existence of 
the crime and law-breaking which certainly 
was in those colonies far in excess of the 
crime in New Netherland and New York. 

I know that Rev. Mr. Miller, the English 
clergyman, did not give the settlement a very 
good name at the last of the seventeenth cen- 
tury; but even his strictures cannot force me 
to believe the colonists so unbearably wicked. 

It should also be emphasized that New 
Netherland was far more tolerant, more gen- 
erous than New England to all of differing 
259 



COLONIAL DAYS 

religious faiths. Under Stuyvesant, however, 
Quakers were interdicted from preaching, 
were banished, and one Friend was treated 
with great cruelty. The Dutch clergymen 
opposed the establishment of a Lutheran 
church, and were rebuked by the Directors 
in Holland, who said that in the future they 
would send out clergymen *' not tainted with 
any needless preciseness ; " and Stuyvesant 
was also rebuked for issuing an ordinance 
imposing a penalty for holding conventicles 
not in accordance with the Synod of Dort. 
Many Christians not in accordance in belief 
with that synod settled in New Netherland. 
Quakers, Lutherans, Church of England folk, 
Anabaptists, Huguenots, Waldenses, Wal- 
loons. The Jews were protected and ad- 
mitted to the rights of citizenship. Director 
Kieft, with heavy ransoms, rescued the cap- 
tive Jesuits, Father Jogues and Father Bres- 
sani, from the Indians and tenderly cared for 
them. No witches suffered death in New 
York, and no statute law existed against 
witchcraft. There is record of but one 
witchcraft trial under the English governor, 
Nicholls, who speedily joined with the Dutch 
in setting aside all that nonsense. 
260 



IN OLD NEW YORK 



CHAPTER XIII 

CHURCH AND SUNDAY IN OLD NEW YORK 

Sunday was not observed in New Nether- 
land with any such rigidity as in New Eng- 
land. The followers of Cocceius would not 
willingly include Saturday night, and not 
even all of the Sabbath day, in their holy 
time. Madam Knight, writing in 1704 of a 
visit to New York, noted : " The Dutch are n't 
strict in keeping the Sabbath as in Boston 
and other places where I have been." This 
was, of course, in times of English rule in 
New York. Still, much respect to the day 
was required, especially under the governing 
hand of the rigid Calvinist Stuyvesant. He 
specially enjoined and enforced strict regard 
for seemly quiet during service time. The 
records of Stuyvesant's government are full 
of injunctions and laws prohibiting *' tavern- 
tapping " during the hours of church service. 
He would not tolerate fishing, gathering of 
261 



COLONIAL DAYS 

berries or nuts, playing in the street, nor 
gaming at ball or bowls during church time. 
At a little later date the time of prohibition 
of noise and tapping and gaming was ex- 
tended to include the entire Sabbath day, 
and the schotit, was ordered to be active in 
searching out and punishing such offenders. 

Occasionally his vigilance did discover 
some Sabbath disorders. He found the 
first Jew trader who came to the island of 
Manhattan serenely keeping open shop on 
Sunday, and selling during sermon time, 
knowing naught of any Sunday laws of New 
Amsterdemi. 

And Albert the Trumpeter was seen on the 
Sabbath in suspicious guise, with an axe on 
his shoulder, — but he was only going to cut 
a bat for his little son ; and as for his neigh- 
bor who did cut wood, it was only kindling, 
since his children were cold. 

And one Sunday evening in 1660 the schont 
triumphantly found three sailors round a tap- 
house table with a lighted candle and a 
backgammon-board thereon; and he surely 
had a right to draw an inference of gaming 
therefrom. 

And in another public-house ninepins were 
262 



IN OLD NEW YORK 

visible, and a can and glass, during preaching- 
time. The landlady had her excuse, — some 
came to her house and said church was out, 
and one chanced to have a bowl in his hand 
and another a pin, but there was no playing 
at bowls. 

Still, though he snooped and fined, in 1656 
the burgomasters learned '' by daily and pain- 
ful experience " that the profanation of ** the 
Lord's day of Rest by the dangerous. Yes, 
damnable Sale or Dealing out of Wines Beers 
and Brandy-Waters " still went on ; and fresh 
Sunday Laws were issued forbidding ''the 
ordinary and customary Labors of callings, 
such as Sowing, Mowing, Building, Sawing 
wood, Smithing, Bleeching, Hunting, Fish- 
ing." All idle sports were banned and 
named: ''Dancing, Card-playing, Tick-tack- 
ing, Playing at ball, at bowls, at ninepins; 
taking Jaunts in Boats, Wagons, or Car- 
riages." 

In 1673, again, the magistrates "experi- 
enced to our great grief" that rolling nine- 
pins was more in vogue on Sunday than on 
any other day. And we learn that there were 
social clubs that " Set on the Sabbath," 
which must speedily be put an end to. 
263 



COLONIAL DAYS 

Thirty men were found by the schout in one 
tap-lmys ; but as they were playing nine- 
pins and backgammon two hours after the 
church-doors had closed, prosecution was 
most reluctantly abandoned. 

Of course scores of " tappers " were prose- 
cuted, both in taverns and private houses. 
Piety and regard for an orderly Sabbath were 
not the only guiding thoughts in the bur- 
gomasters' minds in framing these Sunday 
liquor laws and enforcing them; for some 
tapsters had ** tapped beer during divine ser- 
vice and used a small kind of measure which 
is in contempt of our religion and must ruin 
our state," — and the state was sacred. In 
the country, as for instance on Long Island, 
the carting of grain, travelling for pleasure, 
and shooting of wild-fowl on Sunday were 
duly punished in the local courts. 

I do not think that children were as rigid 
church attendants in New York as in New 
England. In 1696, in Albany, we find this 
injunction: " y^ Constables in cache warde 
to take thought in attending at y^ church to 
hender such children as Profane y^ Sabbath ;" 
and we know that Albany boys and girls 
were complained of for coasting down hill on 
264 



IN OLD NEW YORK 

Sunday, — which enormity would have been 
simply impossible in New England, except 
in an isolated outburst of Adamic depravity. 
In another New York town the ** Athoatys '* 
complained of the violation of the Sabbath 
by " the Younger Sort of people in Discours- 
sing of Vane things and Running of Raesses." 
As for the city of New York, even at Revo- 
lutionary times a cage was set up on City 
Hall Park in which to confine wicked New 
York boys who profaned the Sabbath. I do 
not find so full provisions made for seating 
children in Dutch Reformed churches as in 
Puritan meeting-houses. A wise saying of 
Martin Luther's was " Public sermons do 
very little edify children " — perhaps the 
Dutch agreed with him. As the children 
were taught the Bible and the catechism 
every day in the week, their spiritual and 
religious schooling was sufficient without 
the Sunday sermon, — but, of course, if they 
were not in the church during services, they 
would '' talk of vane Things and run Raesses." 
Before the arrival of any Dutch preacher in 
the new settlement in the new world, the spirit- 
ual care of the little company was provided 
for by men appointed to a benign and beauti- 
265 



COLONIAL DAYS 

fill old Dutch office, and called krankcbesoeck- 
ers or zeikentroosterSy — ** comforters of the 
Sick," — who not only tenderly comforted 
the sick and weary of heart, but '* read to the 
Commonalty on Sundays from texts of Scrip- 
ture with the Comments." These pious men 
were assigned to this godly work in Fort 
Orange and in New Amsterdam and Breucke- 
len. In Esopus they had meetings every 
Sunday, *' and one among us read something 
for a postille." Often special books of 
sermons were read to the congregations. 

In Fort Orange they had a domine before 
they had a church. The patroon instructed 
Van Curler to build a church in 1642; but it 
was not until 1646 that the little wooden 
edifice was really put up. It was furnished 
at a cost of about thirty-two dollars by car- 
penter Fredricksen, with a predickstoel, or 
pulpit, a seat for the magistrates, — de Heere- 
banke, — one for the deacons, nine benches 
and several corner-seats. 

The first church at Albany, built in 1657, 
was simply a block house with loop-holes for 
the convenient use of guns in defence against 
the Indians, — if defence were needed. On 
the roof were placed three small cannon com- 
266 



IN OLD NEW YORK 

manding the three roads which led to it. 
This edifice was called " a handsome preach- 
ing-house," and its congregation boasted that 
it was almost as large as the fine new one 
in New Amsterdam. Its corner-stone was 
laid with much ceremony. In its belfry hung 
a bell presented to the little congregation by 
the Directors of the Amsterdam Chamber of 
the West India Company. The predickstoel 
was the gift of the same board of West India 
Directors, since the twenty-five beavers' skins 
sent for its purchase proved greatly damaged, 
and hence inadequate as payment. 

This pulpit still exists, — a pedestal with a 
flight of narrow steps and curved balustrade. 
It is about four feet in height to its floor, and 
only three in diameter. It is octagonal; one 
of the sides is hinged, and forms the entrance 
door or gate. All the small trimmings and 
mouldings are of oak, and it has a small 
bracket or frame to hold the hour-glass. It 
stood in a space at the end of the centre 
aisle. 

" I see the pulpit high — an octagon, 

Its pedestal, doophuysje, winding stair, 
And room within for one, and one alone, 
A canopy above, suspended there." 

267 



COLONIAL DAYS 

From the ceiling hung a chandelier, and 
candle-sconces projected from the walls. 
There were originally two low-set galleries ; 
a third was added in 1682. The men sat in 
the galleries, and as they carried their arms 
to meeting, were thus conveniently placed to 
fire through the loop-holes if necessity arose. 
The bell-rope from the belfry hung down in 
the middle of the church, and when not in 
use was twisted round a post set for the 
purpose. 

This church was plain enough, but it was 
certainly kept in true Dutch cleanliness, for 
house-cleaners frequently invaded it with pails 
and scrubbing-brushes, brooms, lime, and 
sand. Even the chandelier was scoured, and a 
rageboly or cobweb-brush, was purchased by 
the deacon for the use of the scrubbers. The 
floor was sanded with fine beach-sand, as were 
the floors of dwelling-houses. I find in the 
records of the Long Island churches frequent 
entries of payments for church brooms and 
church sand, — in Jamaica as late a date as 
1836. In 1 841 the deacons bought a carpet. 

In 17 1 5 the second Albany church was 
built, on the site of the old one. As Pepys 
tells of St. Paul's of London, so tradition says 
268 



IN OLD NEW YORK 

this Albany church was built around the first 
one, that the congregation were only three 
weeks deprived of the use of the church, and 
the old one was carried out " by piece meal." 
At any rate, it was precisely similar in shape, 
but was a substantial edifice of stone. This 
building was not demolished until 1806. 

The sittings in this church sold for thirty 
shillings each, and were, as it was termed, 
"booked to next of kin." When the first 
owner of a seat died (were he a man), the 
seat descended to his son or the eldest of his 
grandsons ; if there was no son nor grandson, 
to his son-in-law ; this heir being in default, 
the sitting fell to a brother, and so on. 
When the transfer was made, the successor 
paid fifteen shillings to the church. A 
woman's seat descended to her daughter, 
daughter-in-law, or sister. Sittings were sold 
only to persons residing in Albany County. 
When a seat was not claimed by any heir of 
a former owner, it reverted to the church. 

This church had some pretence to ornamen- 
tation. The windows were of stained glass 
decorated with the coat-of-arms of various 
Albany families. The panes with the Van 
Renssellaer and Dudley arms are still in ex- 
269 



COLONIAL DAYS 

istence. Painted escutcheons also hung on 
the walls, as they did in the church in Garden 
Street, New York. This was a custom of 
the Fatherland. A writer of that day said 
of the church in Harlem, " It is battered as 
full of scutcheons as the walls can hold." 

The meeting-house sometimes bore other 
decorations, — often ''Billets of sales," and 
notices of vendues or " outcrys." Lost 
swine and empounded swine were signified 
by placards; town meetings and laws were 
posted. In the Albany church, when there 
was rumor of an approaching war with 
France, ** powder, bales," and guns to the 
number of fifty were ordered to be '* hung up 
in y® church," — a stern reminder of possible 
sudden bloodshed. *' Y^ fyre-masters " were 
also ordered to see that " y® fyre-ladders and 
fyre-hooks were hung at y® church." 

In 1698 a stone church was built in Flat- 
bush. It cost nearly sixteen thousand guil- 
ders. It had a steep four-sided roof, ending 
in the centre in a small steeple. This roof 
was badly constructed, for it pressed out the 
upper part of one wall more than a foot over 
the foundation, and sorely bent the braces. 
The pulpit faced the door, and was flanked 
270 



IN OLD NEW YORK 

by the deacons' bench on one side and the 
elders' bench on the other. 

Of the seating arrangement of this Flat- 
bush church Dr. Strong says : — 

" The male part of the congregation were seated 
in a continuous pew all along the wall, divided into 
twenty apartments, with a sufficient number of doors 
for entrance, each person having one or more seats. 
The residue of the interior of the building was for 
the accommodation of the female part of the con- 
gregation, who were seated on chairs. These were 
arranged into seven rows or blocks, and every 
family had one or more chairs in some one of 
these blocks. This arrangement of seats was called 
' De Gestoeltens.' Each chair was marked on the 
back by a number or by the name of the person to 
whom it belonged." 

When the church was remodelled, in 
1774, there were two galleries, one for white 
folk, one for black; the benches directly 
under the galleries were free. In the cen- 
tre of the main floor were two benches 
with backs, one called the Yefrows Bench, 
the other the Blue Bench. The former was 
for the minister's wife and family; the other 
was let out to individuals, and was a seat of 
considerable dignity. 

271 



COLONIAL DAYS 

Many of the old Dutch churches, especially 
those on Long Island, were six-sided or 
eight-sided ; these had always a high, steep, 
pyramidal roof terminating in a belfry, which 
was often topped by a gilded weerhaen, or 
weathercock. The churches at Jamaica and 
New Utrecht were octagonal. The Bush- 
wick church was hexagonal. It stood till 
1827, — a little, dingy, rustic edifice. This 
form of architecture was not peculiar to the 
Dutch nor to the Dutch Reformed Church. 
Episcopal churches and the Quaker meeting- 
house at Flushing were similar in shape. 

When the bold sea-captain De Vries, that 
interesting figure in the early history of New 
Netherland, arrived in churchless New Am- 
sterdam, he promptly rallied Director Kieft 
on his dilatoriness and ungodliness, saying it 
was a shame to let Englishmen see the mean 
barn which served Manhattan as a church; 
and he drew odious comparisons, — that "the 
first thing they build in New England after 
their dwelling-houses is a fine church." He 
pointed out the abundant materials for build- 
ing creditably and cheaply, — fine oak wood, 
good mountain stone, excellent lime; and he 
did more, — he supported his advice by a sub- 
272 



IN OLD NEW YORK 

scription of a hundred guilders. Director 
Kieft promised a thousand guilders from the 
West India Company; and Fortune favored 
the scheme, for the daughter of Domine 
Bogardus was married opportunely just at that 
time; and as has been told in Chapter III., 
according to the wise custom of the day 
in Holland, and consequently in America, a 
collection was taken up at the wedding. 
Kieft asked that it be employed for the build- 
ing of a church; and soon a stone church 
seventy-two feet long and fifty-five feet wide 
was erected within the Fort. It was the 
finest building in New Netherland, and bore 
on its face a stone inscribed with these words : 
"Anno Domini 1641, William Kieft, Direc- 
tor-General, hath the Commonalty built this 
Tem^ple." It was used by the congregation 
as a church for fifty years, and for half a cen- 
tury longer by the military as a post-building, 
when it v/as burned. 

There was no church in Breuckelen in 
1660. Domine Selyns wrote, "We preach 
in a barn." The church was built six years 
later, and is described as square, with thick 
stone walls and steep peaked roof surmounted 
by a small open belfry, in which hung the 
18 273 



COLONIAL DAYS 

small, sharp-toned bell which had been sent 
over as a gift by the West India Company. 
The walls were so panelled with dark wood, 
the windows were so high and narrow, that 
it was always dark and gloomy within; even 
in summer-time it was impossible to see to 
read in it after four o'clock in the afternoon. 
Services were held in summer at 9 a. m. and 
2 p. M., and in the winter in the morning 
only. The windows were eight feet from the 
floor, and were darkened with stained glass 
sent from Holland, representing flower-pots 
with vines covered with vari-colored flowers. 
This church stood in the middle of the road 
on what is now Fulton Street, a mile from 
the ferry, and was used until 18 10. 

These early churches were unheated, and 
it is told that the half -frozen domines 
preached with heavy knit or fur caps pulled 
over their ears, and wearing mittens, or zvollen 
handt-schoenen ; and that myn heer as well 
as 7Jiyn vroiizv carried muffs. It is easy to 
fancy some men carrying muffs, — some love- 
locked Cavalier or mincing Horace Walpole; 
but such feminine gear seems to consort ill 
with an Albany Dutchman. That he should 
light his long pipe in meeting was natural 
274 



IN OLD NEW YORK 

enough, — to keep warm; though folk do say 
that he smoked in meeting in summer too, — 
to keep cool. By the middle of the eigh- 
teenth century the Albany and Schenectady 
churches had stoves perched up on pillars on 
a level with the gallery, — in high disregard 
or ignorance of the laws of calorics; hence, 
of course, the galleries, in which sat the men, 
were fairly heated, while the ground floor 
and the vroiiws remained below in icy frigid- 
ity. It is told of more than one old-time 
sexton, that he loudly asserted his office 
and his importance by noisy rattling-down 
and replenishing of the gallery stoves and 
slamming of the iron doors at the most criti- 
cal point in the domine's sermon. Cornelius 
Van Schaick, the Albany sexton, made his 
triumphant way to the stoves, slashing with 
his switch (perhaps his dog-whip) all the 
boys who chanced to be in his way. 

The wom.en of the congregation carried 
foot -stoves of perforated metal or wood, which 
were filled with a box of living coals, to 
afford a little v/armth to the feet. Many now 
living remember the scratching sound of 
these stoves on the boards or the sanded floor 
as they were passed from warm feet to cold 
275 



COLONIAL DAYS 

feet near at hand. Kc7'ck-stooven appear on 
the earliest inventories, were used in Amer- 
ica until our own day, and still are used in 
the churches in Holland. In an anteroom in 
a Leyden church may be seen several hun- 
dred stooven for use in the winter. 

It is stated of the churches in New York 
City that until 1802 services were held, even 
in the winter-time, with wide-open doors, 
and that often the snow lay in little drifts 
up the aisles, — which may have been one 
reason why young folk flocked to Trinity 
Church. 

One very handsome church-equipment of 
the women attendants of the Dutch Reformed 
church was the Psalm-book. This was usu- 
ally bound with the New Testament ; and both 
were often mounted and clasped with silver. 
Sometimes they had tv/o silver rings at the 
back through which ribbons could be passed, 
to hang thereby the books on the back of a 
chair if desired. Sometimes the books had 
silver chains. Rarely they were mounted in 
gold. The inventory of the estate of nearly 
every well-to-do Dutch woman, resident of 
New York, Albany, or the larger towns, 
shows one, and sometimes half-a-dozen of 
276 



IN OLD NEW YORK 

these silver-mounted Psalm-books. Eliza- 
beth Van Es had two Bibles with silver 
clasps, two Psalm-books, and two Catechisms. 
These books were somewhat dingily printed, 
in old Dutch, on coarse but durable paper; 
the music was on every page beside the words. 
The notes of music were square, heavily 
printed, rough-hewn, angular notes, — "like 
stones in the walls of a churchyard," says 
Longfellow of the Psalm-book of the Pil- 
grims. The metrical version of the Psalms 
was simple and impressive, and is certainly 
better literary work in Dutch than is the Bay 
Psalm-book in English. 

The services in these churches were Ions:. 
They were opened by reading and singing 
conducted by the voorleezer or voorzanger, — 
that general-utility man who was usually pre- 
centor, schoolmaster, bell-ringer, sexton, 
grave-digger, and often town-clerk. As 
ordered by the Assembly of XIX., in 1645, 
he "tuned the psalm;" and during the first 
singing the domine entered, and, pausing for 
a few moments, sometimes kneeling at the 
foot of the pulpit-stairs, in silent prayer, he 
soon ascended to his platform of state. The 
psalms were given out to the congregation 
277 



COLONIAL DAYS 

through the medium of a large hanging- board 
with movable printed slips, and this was in 
the charge of the voorleezer. Of course the 
powers of this church functionary varied in 
different towns. In all he seems to have had 
charge of the turning of the hour-glass which 
stood near the pulpit in sight of the domine. 
In Kingston, where the pulpit was high, he 
thrust up to the preacher the notices stuck in 
the end of a cleft stick. In this town, at the 
time of the Revolution, he was also paid two 
shillings per annum by each family to go 
around and knock loudly on the door each 
Sunday morning to warn that it was service- 
time. In some towns he was permitted to 
give three sharp raps of warning with his staff 
on the pulpit when the hour-glass had run out 
a second time, — thus shutting off the sermon. 
The voorleezer is scarcely an obsolete church- 
officer to-day. In 1865 died the last Albany 
voorleezer^ and the Flatbush voorleezer is well 
remembered and beloved. 

The clerk in New Amsterdam was a 
marked personage on Sunday. After he had 
summoned the congregation by the sound 
of drum or bell, he ceremoniously formed 
a pompous little procession of his under- 
278 



IN OLD NEW YORK 

lings, and, heading the line, he carried 
with their assistance the cushions from the 
City Hall to the church, to furnish comfort- 
ably the "Magistrate's Pew," in which the 
burgomasters and schepens sat. 

The deacons had full control of all the 
funds of the church ; they collected the con- 
tributions of the congregation by walking up 
and down the aisles and thrusting in front of 
each "range" of seats in the face of the 
seated people small cloth contribution-bags, 
or sacjeSy hung on a hoop at the end of a 
slender pole six or eight feet in length, — 
fashioned, in fact, somewhat after the model 
of scoop-nets. This custom — the use of so 
unfamiliar a medium for church-collecting 
— gave rise to the amusing notion of one 
observant English traveller that Dutch dea- 
cons passed round their old hats on the end 
of a walking-stick to gather church-contri- 
butions. 

Often a little bell hung at the bottom of 
the contribution-bag, or was concealed in an 
ornamenting tassel, and by its suggestive 
tinkle-tinkle warned all church-attendants 
of the approach of the deacon, and perhaps 
aroused the peaceful church -sleepers from too 
279 



COLONIAL DAYS 

selfish dreams of profitable barter in peltries. 
In New Utrecht the church sacje had an 
alarm-bell which sounded only when a contri- 
bution was made. A loud-speaking silence 
betrayed the stingy church-goer. The col- 
lection was usually taken up in the middle 
of a sermon. The sacjes stood or hung con- 
veniently in the deacon's seat. In Flatbush 
and other towns the deacons paused for a 
time in front of the pulpit — sacje in hand — 
while the domine enjoined generosity to the 
church and kindly Christian thought of the 
poor. The collection-bags in Flatbush were 
of velvet. 

It is said that stray Indians who chanced 
to wander or were piously persuaded to enter 
into the Fort Orange or Albany church dur- 
ing service-time, and who did not well under- 
stand the pulpit eloquence of the Dutch 
tongue, regarded with suspicious and disap- 
proving eyes the unfailing and unreason- 
able appearance of the karck-sacje ; for they 
plainly perceived that there was some occult 
law of cause and effect which could be de- 
duced from these two facts, — the traders who 
gave freely into the church-bags on Sunday al- 
ways beat down the price of beaver on Monday. 
280 



IN OLD NEW YORK 

The bill for one of these karck-sacjes was 
paid by the deacons of the Albany church in 
1682. Seven guilders were given for the 
black stuff and two skeins of silk, and two 
guilders for the making. When a ring was 
bought for the sack (I suppose to hold it 
open at the top), it cost four guilders. This 
instrument of church-collection lingered long 
in isolated localities. It is vaguely related 
that some karck-sacjes are still in existence 
and still used. The church at New Utrecht 
possessed and exhibited theirs at their bicen- 
tennial celebration a few years ago. The 
fate of the sacje was decreed when the honest 
deacons were forced to conclude that it could, 
if artfully manipulated by designing moderns, 
conceal far too well the amount given by 
each contributor, and equally well concealed 
the many and heavy stones deposited therein 
by vain youth of Dutch descent but American 
ungodliness. So an open-faced full-in-view 
pewter or silver plate was substituted and 
passed in its place. In 18 13 the church at 
Success, Long Island, bought contribution 
plates and abandoned the sacje. Some lovers 
of the good old times resented this inevitable 
exposure of the amount of each gift, and 
281 



COLONIAL DAYS 

turned away from the deacon and his inno- 
vating fashion and refused to give at all. 

I ought to add, in defence of the karck- 
sacjes, and in praise of the early congrega- 
tions, that the amount gathered each week 
was most generous, and in proportion far in 
advance of our modern church-contributions. 
The poor were not taken charge of by state 
or town, but were liberally cared for in each 
community by its church; occasionally, how- 
ever, assistance was given through the assign- 
ment to the church by the courts of a portion 
of the money paid as fines in civil and crim- 
inal cases. In New York a deacon's house 
with nurses resident, took the place of an 
almshouse. 

Often during the year much more money 
was collected than was needful for the cur- 
rent expenses of the church. In Albany 
the extra collections were lent out at eight 
per cent interest; at one time four thousand 
guilders were lent to one man. The deacons 
who took charge of the treasury chest in 
Albany each year rendered an account of its 
contents. In 1665 there were in this chest 
seclver-gelt, sea-want, and obligasse, or obli- 
gations, to the amount of 2829 guilders. 
282 



IN OLD NEW YORK 

In 1667 there were 3299 guilders; also good 
Friesland stockings and many ells of linen 
to be given to the poor. 

In some churches poor-boxes were placed at 
the door. The Garden Street Church in New 
York had two strong boxes bound with iron, 
with a small hole in the padlocked lid, and 
painted with the figure of a beggar leaning 
on a staff,— which, according to the testi- 
mony of travellers, was a sight unknown in 
reality in New York at that time. 

The "church-poor," as they were called, 
fared well in New Netherland. Of degraded 
poor of Dutch birth or descent there were 
none. Some poor folk, and old or sickly, 
having a little property, transferred it to the 
Consistory, v/ho paid it out as long as it 
lasted, and cheerfully added to the amount 
by gifts from the church-treasury as long 
as was necessary for the support of those 
"of the poorer sort." To show that these 
church-poor were neither neglected nor de- 
spised, let me give one example of a case — 
an ordinary one — from the deacons' records 
of the Albany church in 1695. Claes 
Janse was assigned at that time to live 
with Hans Kros and his wife Antje. They 
283 



COLONIAL DAYS 

were to provide him with logement, kost, 
drank, wassen (lodging, food, drink, and wash- 
ing), and for this were paid forty guilders a 
month by the church. When Claes died, 
the church paid for his funeral, which appar- 
ently left nothing undone in the way of re- 
spectability. The bill reads thus : — 

Dead shirt and cap . . 
Winding sheet . . . 
Making coffin . . . 

1 lb. nails, cartage coffin 

2 Half Vats good beer . 
6 bottles Rum . . . 
5 gallons Madeira Wine 
Tobacco, pipes, and sugar 

3 cartloads sand for grave 
Graved igging .... 
Deacons give three dry boards for coffin and use of 

pall. 

With a good dry coffin, a good dry grave, 
and a far from dry funeral, Hans Claes' 
days, though he were of the church-poor, 
ended in honor. 

The earlier Dutch ministers were some 

of them rather rough characters. Domine 

Bogardus, in New Amsterdam, and Domine 

Schaets, in Fort Orange, were most uncler- 

284 



16 guilders. 




14 ^' 




24 '* 




3 " 


10 stuyvers. 


30 '' 




22 « 




42 « 




4 " 


10 « 


I " 


10 *' 


3 " 





IN OLD NEW YORK 

ical in demeanor, both in and out of the 
pulpit. Both were engaged in slander suits, 
the former as libeller and defendant; both 
were abusive and personal in the pulpit, 
"dishonoring the church by passion." The 
former was alleged by his enemies to be fre- 
quently drunk, in church and abroad; and, 
fearless of authority, he seized the pulpit as 
a convenient and prominent platform from 
which he could denounce his opposers. From 
his high post he scolded the magistrates, 
called opprobrious names (a hateful offence 
in New Amsterdam), threatened Wouter 
Van Twiller that he would give "from the 
pulpit such a shake as would make him 
shudder." He even arbitrarily refused the 
Communion, thereby causing constant scan- 
dal and dissension. The magistrates doubt- 
less deserved all his rebukes, but in their 
written admonition to him they appear with 
some dignity, expressing themselves forcibly 
and concisely thus : " Your bad tongue is the 
cause of these divisions, and your obstinacy 
the cause of their continuance;" and it is 
difficult now to assign the blame and odium 
of this quarrel very decidedly to either party. 
The domine did not have everything his 
285 



COLONIAL DAYS 

own way on Sundays, for the Director drowned 
his vociferations by ordering the beating of 
drums and firing of cannon outside the church 
during services; and denounced the sermons 
in picturesque language as "the rattling of 
old wives' stories drawn out from a distaff." 
The Labadist travellers thus described the 
Albany domine: — 

*'We went to church in the morning [April 28, 
1680], and heard Domine Schaets preach, who, 
although he is a poor old ignorant person, and be- 
sides is not of good life, yet had to give utterance 
to his passion, having for his text ' Whatever is 
taken upon us,' etc., at which many of his auditors, 
who knew us better, were not well pleased, and in 
order to show their condemnation of it, laughed 
and derided him, which we corrected." 

In turn the Lutheran minister was dubbed 
by the Dutch domines "a rolling, rollicking, 
unseemly carl, more inclined to pore over 
the wine-kan than to look into the Bible." 
And we all know what both Lutherans and 
Dutch thought of the Quaker preachers; so 
all denominations appear equally rude. 

The salaries of the ministers were liberal 
even in early days; that of Domine Megapo- 
lensis (the second minister sent to New 
286 



IN OLD NEW YORK 

Netherland) was, I think, a very fair one. 
He agreed to remain in the colony six years, 
and was given free passage for himself and 
family to the new world ; an outfit of three 
hundred guilders; a salary of three hundred 
guilders a year for three years, and five hun- 
dred annually during the three remaining 
years; and an annual tithe of thirty schepels 
of wheat and two firkins of butter. If he 
died before the term expired, his wife was to 
have a pension of a hundred guilders a year 
for the unexpired term. The first revenue 
relinquished by the West India Company to 
the town of New Amsterdam was the " tap- 
ster' s excise," — the excise on wine, beer, and 
spirits, — and the sole condition made by 
Stuyvesant on its surrender, as to its applica- 
tion, was that the salaries of the two domines 
should be paid from it. 

As time passed on, firewood became one 
of the minister's perquisites, in addition to 
his salary, sixty or seventy loads a season. 
We find the Schenectady congregation hav- 
ing a "bee " to gather in the domine's wood; 
and the Consistory supplied plentiful wine, 
rum, and beer as a treat for the "bee." 

What Cotton Mather called the "angelical 
287 



COLONIAL DAYS 

conjunction " of piety and physic sometimes 
was found in the person of the ministers of 
the Dutch Reformed church, but not so 
constantly as among the Puritan ministers. 
Domine Rubel, sent out by the Classis of 
Amsterdam, was settled over the churches 
in Kings County. He was more devoted to 
the preparation of quack medicines than to 
the saving of souls. One of his advertise- 
ments of March 28, 1778, reads thus: — 

" It has pleased Almighty God to give me the 
wisdom to find out the Golden Mother Tincture 
and such a Universal Pill as will cure most dis- 
eases. I have studied European physicians in four 
different languages. I don't take much money as 
I want no more than a small living whereto God 
will give his blessing. 

Johannes Casparus Rubel, Minister of the 
Gospel and Chymicus." 

This does not let us wonder that after a 
while his parish became dissatisfied with 
his ministrations, and that he ended his 
days in dishonor. 

The employment of the Dutch language 

in the pulpit in New York churches lasted 

until into this century. Naturally, Dutch 

was used as long as the Classis at Amsterdam 

288 



IN OLD NEW YORK 

supplied the churches in America with 
preachers. In 1744 Domine Rubel and 
Domine Van Sinderin were sent to Flat- 
bush, the last ministers sent from the Classis 
of Amsterdam to any American church; 
but at their death the Dutch tongue was not 
silent in the Flatbush church; for their 
successor, Domine Schoonmaker, lived to 
be ninety years old, and never preached but 
one sermon in English. With his death, in 
1824, ceased the public use of the Dutch 
language in the Flatbush pulpit. Until the 
year 1792 the entire service in his church 
was " the gospel undefiled, in Holland Dutch." 
Until the year 1830 services in the seques- 
tered churches in the Catskills were held 
alternately in Dutch and English. Until 
1777 all the records of the Sleepy Hollow 
church were kept in Dutch; and in 1785 all 
its services were in Dutch. In September 
of that year, a little child, Lovine Hauws, 
was baptized in English by the new minister. 
Rev. Stephen Van Voorhees. This raised a 
small Dutch tempest, and the new domine 
soon left that parish. 

In New York City the large English im- 
migration, the constant requirements and 

19 289 



COLONIAL DAYS 

influences of commerce, and the frequent 
intermarriages of the EngHsh and Dutch 
robbed the Dutch language of its predomi- 
nance by the middle of the eighteenth cen- 
tury. Rev. Dr. Laidlie preached in 1764 
the first English sermon to a Dutch Reformed 
congregation. By 1773 English was used 
in the Dutch school, and young people be- 
gan to shun the Dutch services. 

The growth of the Dutch Reformed church 
in New York was slow; this was owing to 
three marked and direct causes : — 

First, from 1693 until Revolutionary times 
Episcopacy was virtually established by law 
in a large part of the province, — in the city 
and county of New York, and in the counties 
of Westchester, Richmond, and Queens; and 
though the Dutch Reformed church was 
protected and respected, people of all de- 
nominations were obliged to contribute to 
the support of the Episcopal church. 

Second, the English language had become 
the current language of the province; in the 
schools, the courts, in all public business it 
was the prevailing tongue, while the services 
of the Dutch Reformed church were by pref- 
erence held in Dutch. 

290 



IN OLD NEW YORK 

Third, all candidates for ministry in the 
Dutch Reformed church were obliged to go 
to Holland for ordination ; this was a great 
expense, and often kept congregations with- 
out a minister for a long time. The entire 
discipline of the church — all the Courts of 
Appeal — was also in the Fatherland. 

In order to obtain relief from the last- 
named hampering condition, a few ministers 
in America devised a plan, in 1737, to secure 
church-organization in New York. It took 
the slow-moving Classis of Amsterdam ten 
years to signify approval of this plan, and a 
body was formed, named the Ccetus. But 
this had merely advisory powers, and In less 
than ten years it asked to be constituted a 
Classis with full ecclesiastical powers. From 
this step arose a violent and bitter quarrel, 
which lasted fifteen years, — until 1771, — be- 
tween the Ccetus party, the Reformers, and 
the Conferentie party, the Conservatives. 
The permission of the Classis of Amsterdam 
for American church independence was finally 
given on condition of establishing a college 
for the proper training of the ministry of the 
Dutch Reformed church. The Ccetus party 
obtained a charter from George III. for a 
291 



COLONIAL DAYS 

college, which, called Queens College, was 
blighted in its birth by the Revolution, but 
lived with varying prosperity until its suc- 
cessful revival, under the name of Rutgers 
College, in 1825. 



292 



IN OLD NEW YORK 



CHAPTER XIV 

" THE END OF HIS DAYS " 

As soon as a death had been announced to 
the dwellers in any little town in colonial 
New York, by the slow ringing or tolling of 
the church-bell, there went forth solemnly 
from his home the aa7ispreecker, or funeral- 
inviter (who might be grave-digger, bell- 
ringer, schoolmaster, or chorister, and who 
was usually all four), attired in gloomy black, 
with hat fluttering long streamers of crape ; 
and with much punctilio he visited all the 
relatives and friends of the deceased person, 
notified them of the death, advised them of 
the day and hour of the funeral, and requested 
their honorable presence. This inviting was 
a matter of most rigid etiquette ; no one in 
these Dutch-American communities of slight- 
est dignity or regard for social proprieties 
would attend a funeral unbidden. The aan- 
spreecker was paid at regular rates for his 
service as living perambulating obituary no- 
293 



COLONIAL DAYS 

tice, according to the distance travelled and 
the time spent, if he lived in a country town 
where distances between houses were great. 

In 1691 the " inviters to the buryiall of de- 
ceased persons " in New York were public 
officers, appointed and licensed by the Mayor. 
Their names were Conradus Vanderbeck and 
Richard Chapman, and they were bidden to 
give their attendance gratis to the poor. A 
law was passed in New York in 1731, setting 
the fees of " inviters to funerals " at eighteen 
shillings for the funeral of any one over 
twenty years of age; for a person between 
twelve and twenty years, twelve shillings ; for 
one under twelve years, eight shilHngs. For 
a large circle of friends these sums seem 
small. The Flatbush inviter in 1682 had 
twelve guilders for inviting to the funeral of 
a grown person, and only four guilders in 
addition if he invited in New York, — which 
was poor pay enough, when we think of the 
long ride and the row across. In 1760 we 
find the New York inviter, Evert Pels, adver- 
tising his change of residence, and that he 
can be found if needed next King's Stores. 
It is easy to imagine that the aanspreecker 
must have been a somewhat self-important 
294 



IN OLD NEV/ YORK 

personage, who doubtless soberly enjoyed 
his profession of mortuary news-purveyor, 
and who must have been greeted wherever 
he went with that grewsome interest which 
in colonial days attached to everything per- 
taining to death. 

This public officer and custom was prob- 
ably derived from the Romans, who used to 
send a public crier about, inviting the people 
to the solemnization of a funeral. In the 
northern counties of England each village 
had its regular '* bidder," who announced his 
** funeral-bidding" by knocking on each door 
with a great key. Sometimes he '* cried " the 
funeral through the town with a hand-bell. 
In New York the fashion was purely of Dutch 
derivation. In Holland the aanspreecker was 
an official appointed by government, and au- 
thorized to invite for the funerals of persons 
of all faiths and denominations who chanced 
to die in his parish. 

In New York, ever bent on fashions new, 
the aanspreeckeVy on mournful mission intent, 
no longer walks our city avenues nor even 
our country lanes or village streets ; but in 
Holland he still is a familiar form. Not, as of 
old, the honored schoolmaster, but simply a. 
295 



COLONIAL DAYS 

hired servant of the undertaker, he rushes 
with haste through the streets of Dutch 
towns. Still clad in dingy black of ancient 
fashion, kncebreeches, buckled shoes, long 
cloak, cocked hat with long streamers of 
crape, he seems the sombre ghost of old- 
time manners. Sometimes he bears written 
invitations deep bordered with black ; some- 
times he calls the death and time of funeral, 
as did the Roman /n^t-^y and sometimes, with 
streamers of white, and white cockade on his 
hat, he goes on a kindred duty, — he bears to 
a circle of friends or relatives the news of a 
birth. 

Before the burial took place, in olden times, 
a number of persons, usually intimate friends 
of the dead, watched the body throughout 
the night. Liberally supplied with various 
bodily comforts, such as abundant strong 
drink, plentiful tobacco and pipes, and newly 
baked cakes, these watchers were not wholly 
gloomy, nor did the midnight hours lag un- 
solaced. The great kamer in which the body 
lay, the state-room of the house, was an 
apartment so rarely used on other occasions 
than a funeral that in many households it was 
known as the doed-kuTuer, or dead-room. 
296 



IN OLD NEW YORK 

Sometimes it had a separate front door by 
which it was entered, thus giving two front 
doors to the house. Diedrich Knickerbocker 
says the front door of New York houses was 
never opened save for funerals, New Years, and 
such hoHdays. The kitchen door certainly 
offered a more cheerful welcome. In North 
Holland the custom still exists of reserving 
a room with separate outside entrance, for 
use for weddings and funerals. Hence the 
common saying in Holland that doors are not 
made for going in and out of the house. 

Men and women both served as watchers, 
and sometimes both were at the funeral ser- 
vices within the doed-kamer; but when the 
body was borne to the grave on the wooden 
bier resting on the shoulders of the chosen 
bearers, it was followed by men only. The 
women remained for a time in the house 
where the funeral had taken place, and ate 
doed-koecks and sipped Madeira wine. 

The coffin, made of well-seasoned boards, 
was often covered with black cloth. Over it 
was spread the docd-kieed, a pall of fringed 
black cloth. This doed-klced was the property 
of the church, as was the pall in New Eng- 
land churches, and was usually stored with 
297 



COLONIAL DAYS 

the bier in the church-vestibule, or doop-huys. 
In case of a death in childbirth, a heavy 
white sheet took the place of the black pall. 
This practice also obtained in Yorkshire, 
England. 

Among the Dutch a funeral was a most 
costly function. The expenditure upon funeral 
gloves, scarfs, and rings, which was univer- 
sal in New England, was augmented in New 
York by the gift of a bottle of wine and a 
linen scarf. 

When Philip Livingstone died, in 1749, his 
funeral was held both in New York and at 
the Manor. He had lived in Broad Street, 
and the lower rooms of his house and those 
of his neighbors were thrown open to receive 
the assemblage. A pipe of wine was spiced 
for the guests, and the eight bearers were 
each given a pair of gloves, a mourning-ring, 
a scarf, handkerchief, and a monkey-spoon. 
At the Manor a similar ceremony took place, 
and a pair of gloves and handkerchief were 
given to each tenant. The whole expense 
was five hundred pounds. When Madam 
Livingstone died, we find her son writing to 
New York from the Manor for a piece of 
black Strouds to cover the four hearse-horses; 
298 



IN OLD NEW YORK 

for a ** Barrel! of Cutt Tobacco and Long 
Pipes of which I am out; " for six silver 
tankards and cinnamon for the burnt wine; 
he said he had bottles, decanters, and glasses 
enough. The expense of these funerals 
may have been the inspiration for William 
Livingstone's paper on extravagance in 
funerals. 

A monkey-spoon was a handsome piece of 
silver bearing the figure or head of an ape on 
the handle. Mannetiens spoons, also used in 
New Netherland, were similar in design. At 
the funeral of Henry De Forest, an early 
resident of New Harlem in 1637, his bearers 
were given spoons. 

A familiar and extreme example of excess 
at funerals as told by Judge Egbert Benson 
was at the obsequies of Lucas Wyngaard, an 
old bachelor who died in Albany in 1756. 
The attendance was very large, and after the 
burial a large number of the friends of the 
dead man returned to the house, and literally 
made a night of it. These sober Albany cit- 
izens drank up a pipe of wine, and smoked 
many pounds of tobacco. They broke hun- 
dreds of pipes and all the decanters and 
glasses in the house, and wound up by burn- 
299 



COLONIAL DAYS 

ing all their funeral scarfs in a heap in the 
fireplace. 

In Albany the expense, as well as the riot- 
ing, of funerals seems to have reached a cli- 
max. It is said that the obsequies of the 
first wife of Hon. Stephen Van Rensselaer 
cost twenty thousand dollars. Two thousand 
linen scarfs were given, and all the tenants 
were entertained for several days. 

On Long Island every young man of good 
family began in his youth to lay aside money 
in gold coin to pay for his funeral ; and a 
superior stock of wine was also saved for the 
same occasion. In Albany the cask of choice 
Madeira which was bought for a wedding and 
used in part, was saved in remainder for the 
funeral of the bridegroom. 

The honor of a lavish funeral was not given 
to the wealthy and great and distinguished 
only. The close of every life, no matter how 
humble, how unsuccessful, was through the 
dignity conferred by death afforded a tri- 
umphal exit by the medium of " a fine 
burying." 

In the preceding chapter the funeral of a 
penniless Albanian is noted; in 1696 Ryseck 
Swart also became one of the church-poor 
300 



IN OLD NEW YORK 

of Albany. She was not wholly penniless; 
she had a little silver and a few petty jewels, 
and a little strip of pasture land, worth in all 
about three hundred guilders. These she 
transferred to the church, for the Consistory 
to take charge of and dole out to her. A 
good soul, Marritje Lievertse, was from 
that time paid by the church thirty-six 
guilders a month for caring for Ryseck. I 
do not doubt she had tender care, for she 
was the last of the real church-poor (soon 
they had paupers and an almshouse), and 
she lived four years, and cost the parish two 
thousand two hundred and twenty-nine guil- 
ders. She died on February 15, 1700, and, 
though a pauper, she departed this life 
neither unwept, unhonored, nor unsung. 
Had she been the cherished wife of a 
burgomaster or schepen^ she could scarce 
have had a more fully rounded or more 
proper funeral. The bill, which was paid 
by the church, was as follows : — 

g. s. 
3 dry boards for a coffin ... 710 

f lb. nails i 10 

Making coffin 24 

Cartage 10 

301 



COLONIAL DAYS 

Half a vat and an anker of good g. 

beer 27 

I gallon Rum 21 

6 gallons Madeira for women and 

men 84 

Sugar and cruyery 5 

150 Sugar cakes 15 

Tobacco and pipes 5 

Grave digger 30 

Use of pall 10 

Wife Jans Lockermans .... 36 

232 guilders. 

Rosenboom, for many years the voor-leeser 

and dood-graver and aanspreecker in Albany, 

sent in a bill of twelve guilders for delivering 

invitations to the funeral, — which bill was 

rejected by the deacons as exorbitant. But 

the invitations were delivered just the same, 

for even colonial paupers had friends, and her 

coffin was not made of green wood held 

together with wooden pegs, which some poor 

bodies had to endure; and the one hundred 

and fifty doed-koecks and Madeira for the 

women very evenly balanced the plentiful 

beer and wine and tobacco for the men. 

Truly, to quote one of Dyckman's letters 

from Albany, " the poor's purse here was 

richly garnisht." 

302 



IN OLD NEW YORK 

An account of Albany, written by a traveller 
thereto in 1789, showed the continued exist- 
ence of these funeral customs. It runs 
thus : — 

*' Their funeral customs are equally singular. 
None attend them without a previous invitation. 
At the appointed hour they meet at the neighboring 
houses or stoops until the corpse is brought out. 
Ten or twelve persons are appointed to take the 
bier altogether, and are not relieved. The clerk 
then desires the gentlemen (for ladies never walk 
to the grave, nor even attend the funeral unless a 
near relation) to fall into the procession. They go 
to the grave and return to the house of mourning 
in the same order. Here the tables are handsomely 
set and furnished with cold and spiced wine, tobacco 
and pipes, and candles, paper, etc., to light them. 
The house of mourning is soon converted into a 
house of feasting." 

In New York we find old citizens leaving 
directions in their wills that their funeral shall 
be conducted in "the old Dutch fashion," 
not liking the comparatively simpler modern 
modes. 

The customs were nearly the same in 

English families. At the funeral of Hon. 

Rufus King at Jamaica, Long Island, in 1827, 

which was held upon an exceptionally hot 

303 



COLONIAL DAYS 

day in April, silver salvers holding decanters 
of wine and spirits, glasses and cigars, were 
constcintly passed, both indoors and out, 
where many stood waiting the bearing of 
the coffin to the grave. 

The transition of the funeral customs of 
ante-Revolutionary days into those of our 
own may partially be learned from this 
account written in 1858 by Rev. Peter Van 
Pelt, telling Domine Schoonmaker's method 
of conducting a funeral in the year 18 19: 

"The deceased had, many years before, pro- 
vided and laid away the materials for his own 
coffin. This one was of the best seasoned and 
smoothest boards and beautifully grained. As I 
entered the room I observed the coffin elevated 
on a table in one corner. The Domine, abstracted 
and grave, was seated at the upper end ; and 
around in solemn silence, the venerable and hoary- 
headed friends of the deceased. A simple recog- 
nition or a half-audible inquiry as one after another 
arrived was all that passed. Directly the sexton, 
followed by a servant, made his appearance with 
glasses and decanters. Wine was handed to each. 
Some declined; others drank a solitary glass. 
This ended, again the sexton presented himself 
with pipes and tobacco. The Domine smoked 
his pipe and a few followed his example. The 

304 



IN OLD NEW YORK 

custom has become obsolete, and it is well that 
it has. When the whiffs of smoke had ceased 
to curl around the head of the Domine, he arose 
with evident feeling, and in a quiet subdued tone, 
made a short but apparently impressive address. 
I judged solely by his appearance and manner; 
for although boasting a Holland descent, it was 
to me an unknown tongue. A short prayer con- 
cluded the service j and then the sexton taking 
the lead, followed the Domine, doctor, and pall- 
bearers with white scarfs and black gloves. The 
corpse and long procession of friends and neigh- 
bors proceeded to the churchyard." 

Not only were materials for the coffin se- 
cured and made ready during the lifetime, 
but often a shroud was made and kept for 
use. Instances have been known where a 
shroud was laid by unused for so many years 
that it became too yellow and discolored to 
use at all, and was replaced by another. 
Sometimes a new unlaundered shirt was laid 
aside for years to use as a doed-hemde. Two 
curious superstitions were rife in some locali- 
ties, especially on Long Island ; one was the 
careful covering of all the mirrors in the 
house, from the time of the death till after 
the funeral ; the other the pathetically pictu- 
resque "telling the bees." Whittier's gentle 

20 305 



COLONIAL DAYS 

rhyme on the subject has made familiar to 
modern readers the custom of " telling the 
bees of one, gone on the journey we all must 

go- 
Both an English and Dutch funeral fashion 
was the serving to the attendants of the 
funeral of funeral-cakes. In New York and 
New Netherland these were a distinctive 
kind of koeckje known as doed-koecks, literally 
dead-cakes. An old receipt for their manu- 
facture is thus given by Mrs. Ferris : " Four- 
teen pounds of flour, six pounds of sugar, 
five pounds of butter, one quart of water, 
two teaspoonfuls of pearlash, two teaspoon- 
fuls of salt, one ounce of Caraway seed. Cut 
in thick dishes four inches in diameter." 
They were, therefore, in substance much like 
our New Year's cakes. Sometimes they were 
marked with the initials of the deceased 
person; and often they were carried home 
and kept for years as a memento of the dead, 
— perhaps of the pleasures of the funeral. 
One baker in Albany made a specialty of 
these cakes, but often they were baked at 
home. Sometimes two of these doed-koecks 
were sent with a bottle of wine and a pair of 
gloves as a summons to the funeral. 
306 



IN OLD NEW YORK 

In Whitby, England, a similar cake is still 
made by bakers and served at funerals ; but 
it is sprinkled with white sugar. In Lincoln- 
shire and Cumberland like customs still exist. 
** Burial-cakes " were advertised by a baker 
in 1748 in the Philadelphia newspapers. 

It is frequently asserted that funeral rings 
were commonly given among the Dutch. 
It seems fair to infer that more of them 
would have been in existence to-day if the 
custom had been universal. Scores of them 
can be found in New England. There is an 
enamelled ring marked " K. V. R., obit Sept. 
16, 1719," which was given at the funeral of 
Kileaen Van Renssalaer. One of the Earl 
of Bellomont is also known, and two in the 
Lefferts family, dating towards the close of 
the past century. I have heard of a few others 
in Hudson Valley towns. Perhaps with gifts 
of gloves, spoons, bottles of wine, doed-koecks, 
scarfs, or handkerchiefs, rings would have 
been superfluous. 

It will be noted in all these references to 
funerals herein given that the services were 
held in private houses; it was not until al- 
most our own day that the funerals of those 
of Dutch descent were held in the churches. 
307 



COLONIAL DAYS 

Interments were made under the churches ; 
and, by special payment, a church-attendant 
could be buried under the seat in which he 
was wont to sit during his lifetime. The cost 
of interment in the Flatbush church was two 
pounds for the body of a child under six 
years ; three pounds for a person from six 
to sixteen years of age ; four pounds for an 
adult ; and in addition *' those who are in- 
clined to be permitted to be interred in the 
church are required to pay the expense of 
every person." I don't know exactly what 
this ambiguous sentence can mean, but it 
was at any rate an extra charge " for the 
profit of the schoolmaster," who dug the 
grave and carried the dirt out of the church, 
and was paid twenty-seven guilders for this 
sexton's work for an adult, and less for a 
younger person and hence a smaller grave. 
Usually the domines were buried in front of 
the pulpit where they had stood so often in life. 

After newspaper-days arrived in the colony, 
there blossomed in print scores of long death- 
notices, thoroughly in the taste of the day, 
but not to our taste. In the '' New York 
Gazette" of December 24, 1750, we find a 
characteristic one : — 
308 



IN OLD NEW YORK 

" Last Friday Morning departed this Life after a 
lingering Illness the Honorable Mrs. Roddam, wife 
to Robert Roddam, Esq. Commander of his Ma- 
jesty's Ship Greyhound, now on this Station, and 
eldest Daughter of his Excellency our Governor. 
We hear she is to be Interred this Evening. 

" Good Mr. Parker — Dont let the Character of 
our Deceased Friend, Mrs. Roddam, slip through 
your Fingers, as that of her Person through those 
of the Doctors. That she was a most affable and 
perfectly Good-Natured young Lady, with Good 
Sense and Politeness is well known to all her 
Acquaintances, and became one of the most affec- 
tionate Wives. 

" Immatura peri, sed tu felicior, Annos 
Vivi mens, Conjux optime, viva tuos 

were the Sentiments of her Later Moments when I 
had the Honour to attend her. As this is intended 
as a small Tribute to the Manes of my dear departed 
Friend, your inserting of it will oblige one of your 
constant Female Readers and Humble Servant." 

Another, of a well-known colonial dame, 
reads thus : — 

" Last Monday died in the 8oth year of her 
Age, and on Thursday was decently interred in 
the Family Vault at Morrisania : Isabella Morris, 
Widow and Relict of his Excellency Lewis Morris, 
Esq., Late Governor of the Province of New Jer- 
309 



COLONIAL DAYS 

sey : A Lady endowed with every Qualification 
Requisite to render the Sex agreeable and enter- 
taining, through all the Various scenes of Life. 
She was a pattern of Conjugal Affection, a ten- 
der Parent, a sincere Friend, and an excellent 
Oeconomist. 

She was 

Liberal, without Prodigality 

Frugal, without Parsimony 

Chearful, without Levity 

Exalted, without Pride. 

In person. Amiable 

In conversation, Affable 

In friendship. Faithful 

Of Envy, void. 

She passed through Life endovv'd with every Grace 
Her virtues ! Black Detraction can't deface ; 
Or Cruel Envy e'er eclipse her Fame; 
Nor Mouldering Time obhterate her Name." 

The tiresome, pompous, verbose produc- 
tions, Johnsonian in phrase and fulsome in 
sentiment, which effloresced on the death of 
any man in public life or of great wealth, 
need not be repeated here. They were mo- 
notonously devoid of imagination and origi- 
nality, being full of idle repetitions from each 
other, and whoever has labored through one 
can judge of them all. 

310 



' IN OLD NEW YORK 

It does not give us a very exalted notion 
of the sincerity or value of these funeral 
testimonials, or the mental capacity of our 
ancestors, to read in the newspapers adver- 
tisements of printed circulars of praise for 
the dead, eulogistic in every aspect of the 
life of the departed, and suitable for various 
ages and either sex, to be filled in with the 
name of the deceased, his late residence, and 
date of death. 

Puttenham in the " Arte of English Poesie," 
says : '* An Epitaph is an inscription such as 
a man may commodiously write or engrave 
vpon a tombe in few verses, pithie, quicke, 
and sententious, for the passer-by to peruse 
and judge vpon without any long tariaunce." 

There need be no ''long tariaunce" for 
either inquisitive or irreverent search over 
the tombstones of the Dutch, for the digni- 
fied and simple inscriptions are in marked 
contrast to the stilted affectations, the ver- 
bose enumerations, the pompous eulogies, 
which make many English "graveyard lines" 
a source of ridicule and a gratification of 
curiosity. Indeed, the Dutch inscriptions 
can scarcely be called epitaphs; the name, 
date of birth and death, are simply prefaced 
311 



COLONIAL DAYS 

with the ever-recurring Hier rust het lighaam^ 
Here rests the body ; Hier leydt het stoffelyk 
deel, Here lie the earthly remains ; or simpler 
still, Hier leyt begraven. Here lies buried. 
Sometimes is found the touching Gedach- 
tenisy In remembrance. More impressive 
still, from its calm repetition on stone after 
stone, of an undying faith in a future Hfe, 
are the ever-present words, In den Heere 
ontslapen^ Sleeping in the Lord. 

Not only in memory of those dead-and- 
gone colonists stand these simple Dutch 
tombstones, but in suggestive remembrance 
also of a language forever passed away from 
daily life in this land. The lichened lettering 
of those unfamiliar words seems in sombre 
truth the very voice of those honored dead 
who, in those green Dutch graveyards, in 
the shadow of the old Dutch churches, in 
den Heere ontslapen. 



312 




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